 I welcome everyone to the very first service design show live episode, or if you're watching their recording, welcome to this recording of the live episode. For the people who don't know me, I'm Mark Fontaine and you might have seen my face in one of the previous service design show episodes that I've been running in the last, well, I think it's 18 months almost, like what I have here. If you haven't seen the service design show yet, be sure to check out servicedesignshow.com, and that will take you to a YouTube page, but there's also a podcast and of course, you're watching to this Facebook live event. I'm joined in this very first live episode by a former guest. I just checked it and it was episode 20, and it's Mauricio Manez. Am I saying that right Mauricio? Yes, let's go. How would you say it in Brazilian? Manez. Manez. Mauricio, you've been a guest on the show, and I've been in touch with you quite often in the past year. I've been exchanging ideas, and then basically we came up with the thought, there's a topic we'd like to explore. Why not do an interview, and then I said, why wouldn't we want to involve some of the people out of the service design community? And that's how basically this idea of the live episode was born, right? Yes, embracing prototypes always. Innovating, innovating and prototyping. I see that there are people watching live out of the 31 Ford Studio. Let's make this as interactive as possible. Feel free to comment, leave a comment, leave a comment where you are from. Mauricio and I can see those comments. So let me see, here's a comment from Marcel. If you have any questions regarding to what Mauricio is saying, or if you have any comments, please interact. Yeah, let's kick it off. Mauricio, for the people who don't know who you are, could you share a little bit about your background and how did you end up in the place where you are today? Okay, so good morning, good afternoon, everybody. It's afternoon here, you're right. Here in Savannah, Georgia, it's 8 a.m. Well, I started the past service design back in 2006. I was working as an IT manager, web development, and at some point I started to research about a better way to do IT development. And that's how I got into service design. Well, you're going fast. Transitioning for IT development into service design, what happened? After a couple of major, big development, system development, and how hard it was to understand the users and be sensible to what they need, I started to research an alternative to do this better. By out of desk research, I found out service design and got in contact with the SDN headquarters in Germany. Birgit Mager was really welcoming, and since then, I got a master. I see that Augusta, a colleague of mine, my dear friend, was a colleague of mine during the master studies. And then I went to PhD, research and service innovation. And you didn't have the educational field since, right? You're right now a teacher or lecturer at... Yeah, I'm a professor of the service design, a full-time professor of the service design program at SCAD in the United States. And it's been fun. And one of the things that I've been working on is this developing a discourse for service design. So I'm very much interested in exposing service design to outsiders, to preach outside of the core. So this is my topic now that I'm researching. All right, the thing we'll be talking about in the next, let's say 25 minutes is we shared it already in the introduction in the Facebook post. And it summarizes as, is service design a profession? And if so, what defines service design as a profession? And what you added to that is, how can we define service design without excluding ourselves or creating new silos? That's basically what we'll be talking about, right? Yeah, yes, that's true. So the main thing here, taking here at SCAD, we have a program that's user experience. So you have a major in user experience and we have a major in service design. And we are inside the school of design and under the umbrella of the industrial design program. So we, let's say, we share time and space a lot with these other disciplines. And at some point you have to, OK, but what do I bring to the table as a service designer? Yeah, yeah. And you're right, what we've been seeing here is that we always, and when we see our students working with industrial design students and UX, graphic design, we always bring some kind of a overarching perspective for everything. And then, so we just welcome everybody on board. We try to orchestrate them, connecting the dots. And this, in a sense, pose a challenge to develop a discourse that is more like, oh, this is my part, this is your part. Exactly, yeah, claiming stuff. Yeah, and actually we see clearly, and our students understand this, that we are kind of the bridge between the different stakeholders. It's kind of our duty or our task to keep everybody on board during the whole process. And, of course, this has a lot of implications, like how to assess what the user wants, all stakeholders involved in any process. So it demands a very interesting set of capabilities and techniques. So before we dive deeper into that topic, I want to welcome the people who are watching, who joined in later on live in this episode. Welcome, everyone. Feel free to share this live episode as it's going on with the people you know on your timeline. And leave a comment and let us know where you're from. And also, if you have any questions or comments regarding what Mauricio is saying, type them in, we can see them live, I can post them here in the stream so we'll be able to respond. And let's make this as interactive as possible. We're not alone today, Mauricio, that's good, people joined in. Yeah, I guess Mark, it's interesting to, I guess, highlight again that as we started, we are prototyping this. Exactly, so please feel free, all the ones that everyone that is watching, please just ping and let us know how we can make this even more valuable. Yeah, so somebody is here from Bristol with us, that's nice. Bristol UK, hi Richard. Yeah, leave comments, that's nice to be able to interact with you guys. Mauricio, so actually we, it's morning in Savannah, it's afternoon here in Utrecht, and we were actually having this conversation, this exact conversation during lunch here. And we were talking about, you know, for instance, often the comparison between UX and service design or anything related to digital and service design and what makes service design difference, you know. So my first question to you would be, why is this such an interesting topic for you? Why are you researching this topic? Why are you trying to create this discourse around it? Because I truly believe that service design can bring a lot of value to service. Name it, we can, and I've seen this happening, we here at SCAD, we have the CLC, the Collaborative Learning Center, where we work a lot with major US companies. And I can see, and those projects, they happen by involving different majors. So let's say Coca-Cola comes to SCAD, we assemble a diverse group of students, and at the end, we have to deliver something to Coca-Cola, or Delta Airlines, or Disney, Microsoft, Google. And I can see clearly, just to illustrate this, when the projects are announced, each project has a list of majors that they usually require to be on board. And it's really interesting to see across all types of projects, that there is a thread that all of them ask for service designers. So sometimes there are like a very, I don't know, furniture focused project, or graphic design, or web, or, but all of them always ask for service designers. So, and do they know what they are asking for? Yes, and they are asking for this person that keeps the dots connected. They like to have this bird's view of whatever they are developing. It brings value to the table. So that's the point, I guess, the main interest of developing this type of discourse. And again, we're not trying to create the 10 commandments of service design. It's an ongoing thing. These discourse to be alive must be changing, must be evolving. So it's a walk, it's a series of steps, and it's evolving. So when I published this first paper, I don't know if people can see. What's the name of it? We can Google it probably. Three overarching perspectives of service design at touchpoint. So there was some contribution we proposed. We are proposing three overarching perspective for service design. And then we are now working on a new paper for, we will be a next step. So it's an evolving thing. And this is a very interesting research we did. So what's the research about? What was the main objective of the research? The research started by asking 13 service designers across the world how they would solve five different scenarios that we figured out would be complex scenarios. So the grad students at SCAD, they create five complex scenarios to be solved by service designers, sent them to 40 service designers across the world, 13 replied, and it was kind of a briefing. And from their replies, their texts saying how they would tackle, how they would approach those five scenarios, we made a discourse analysis. And there's a way of technique to do this. And we found three topics relating surrounding this, the way they approach these five scenarios. One, it's called stories, one team, and one implementing. And it's really interesting to see that the topic one that's called stories involves words as service, prototype, innovation, journey, mapping, maps design is a very strong one. So there's a ranking of consistency on the discourse. So within the service design community, within these 13, yeah. So but it's interesting that the discourse, the topic around stories, has a value of 9.45. So the higher, the more consistent. The discourse around team intervention, culture, organization, people, change, co-creation has a consistent load factor we call 4.1. So it's kind of half of the consistency of the topic around stories, narratives, storytelling. And the third one we call implementing, the third one called implementing has a consistency factor of 2.79. So it's really interesting to see how the stories, discourse, the structure is really high consistently. So it's a kind of a narrative that we have really well established. Then the team that co-creation drops to half, so four. And the implementing is 2.79. So it's the weakest. So what does this tell you, Maurizio? What does this say about service design as a profession? It's, well, that's what we're trying to understand here. But you have to summarize it. I shared the link to the touch point article. So what we see, what we're trying to make sense is definitely we know how to make sense of things. That's why the topic of stories, so the topic involves words like stories, service, maps, mapping, prototype, innovation, journey, design, work. So that's our vocabulary. Yeah, our vocabulary is consistent. So those words, they occur together in a consistent manner throughout the discourse. And it's interesting. So the topic one stories has 15 kind of factors, words that support this. The team, co-creation, intervention, culture has 12. And the implementing, the topic of implementation has only seven. So there's only seven words that consistently appear throughout the discourse about implementing service design. So there's a lack of words to talk about implementing service design. I think we all feel that. That's the point we are writing this paper. And at some point, we make this inference as we even say it's a questionable inference, but this is what we feel. So yeah, this is what we feel about this prop. So just to read you. So that aspect, so that the implementing leads the authors to infer a second questionable connection with the collective perception among service design academics and practitioners of a lack of implementation discourse in the related community. It's a feeling that we had, but now we have kind of a scientific evidence to support this. And it's really visual. I don't think people will be able to see it. You can see it now. But the topic one, so the stories narrative, this team co-working, collaboration, and this is implementation. So it's kind of smaller with eigenvalue, the consistency of 2.7. So and then we try to bring words or complementing. So the paper is, okay, can we bring words to this topic? Can we support or even question words that are there that shouldn't be or lacking? And what did you find? Or is that the next research question? Yeah, we're still writing this, the paper. So it's still ongoing. So basically, Marisa, what I'm getting out of this, well, and I've read the article, but now that you're telling about it, it tends to make more sense. But what you're saying is that there is a discourse around service design or within the service design community. It's not that tangible, and this paper tries to make it more tangible. And it's like emergent. It's not top down, but it's trying to capture what is already, what is already there within the design field, but isn't described yet. Yes, it's what actually Heidegger calls pro to discourse. We're learning a lot about science. It's kind of a call of conscience arising from a world already meaningful, but not yet in language. Exactly. So we're doing this, but there's no... We haven't described it yet. ...language, just to say things. How do you see this translated in a practical way? So is this something companies will be using to formulate application briefs? Or is this something service designers will use to describe their skills? How do you see this benefiting us? Yes, the main goal is to... For us, in a sense, for... So I'm working with SDN on the academic task force. This type of research will provide the guidelines. So what we should be teaching are complementing what we teach. So in a practical sense for training service designers, it points towards gaps and adjustment. But also, of course, we are in the United States. So we have a very entrepreneurial take on how these can benefit companies. So, of course, these will be translated also to how HR recruiters will assess and hire service designers. And it's maybe also really useful to be used that you're sort of setting a benchmark in a really positive way. Because when we have a benchmark as service designers, we can also say or better articulate how we are different, or in which sense we specialize. It's setting a benchmark for what it means to be a service designer. Yeah, what we capture here is, again, this connection, systemic perspective for sure. We see this, so the whole stories behind this, when you apply to this literature review, you see sense making in organizations. What we should do now? Why should we do this? When should we do that? So making sense of a service as a system. And then team is the collaboration, co-creation, intervention made by buying. So it's the sense making process. Like what we should do now, that's one of the questions. Strategic question. And strategic, I mean decisions that improve organizational performance. So in that sense, service design is strategic. But we need to develop the implementing part. Maybe a question that you propose yourself is by setting this benchmark, by defining this language, you issued the worry that we might be isolating ourselves or creating new silos. How do you see that? No, no, no, that's the point. That's the, I guess, if there was just a matter of creating a silo, the work would be a lot easier. But how can we define ourselves in a way, in an inclusive way? We are very much guided by critical thinking. So we, at some point, we don't, we would prefer not to state precise characteristics, tools and methods. It should be, that's the main proposal of the paper at touch point. It's an overarching perspective. You will do, you will implement this the way you want, the way you can in the organization, the specific context you are in. But we would like just to provide this, okay, how service design would look at it? It's a perspective. It's not, we don't, we would like... Ten commandments, like you said, it's not a ten commandments. No, it's not, and it will be evolving. So if there's any, there's no hope for us to formalize ten commandments at all. What it means to be a service designer. At all, it's a take. How do we approach things? It's a way of approach. It's a mindset. It's not a characteristic skill level. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, and we do this, we make this. So very much into micro, meso and macro level. So it depends. You can apply this perspective to solve the very small thing or the whole organization. And the few resources, we were discussing with the two companies back in September. One had very few resources to invest, and the other had five billion dollars to invest. So, and in both ways, we can be there and do something meaningful. How would you compare this, so maybe that I will even better understand, compare this to a different profession? How would this apply to a lawyer? What you are doing? What are you defining? Or what are you not defining? Yeah, the take is to make sense of things. So we, so one of the things that we provide or are trying to provide for this paper is a background for these three topics. So we say that the background for these topics are actually service, the concept of service, systemic, holistic, interconnected, based basically on service domain logic and the context of design. What's the difference between a design approach and engineering approach or a management approach? Exactly, yeah. So those two will be the background, the scenario in which those three topics come to life. Is there a way the people who are watching this live episode or watching their recording can contribute or can read more about this? Could you use any help? Actually, what I usually tell in class, the sentence that I love the most is, I have a question. So Vassar, I have a question. So if people have, like I can't grasp this, I'm not understanding. So just ask and our job will be trying to explain this. We'll create the discourse. So again, it's a proto discourse. So the more people ask, no, a simple question like, please, could you clarify this? Explain more that. You need more questions to know what to explain better or better articulate. Like again, I posted the link to the article that was published in Touchpoint. That's basically the paper you were talking about, right? Yeah, in Touchpoint we made, as it's supposed to be, it's a journal to the broader audience. So we try to make it summarizing the idea in a nutshell. But I hope with this, the next paper will be more, let's say, academic and be more precise into the explanation. But the three main perspectives are understanding stakeholders context. So in a broad sense, mapping the stakeholders and understanding the word understanding is really important to this thing. The other one would be understanding innovation dynamics. So how innovation happens, how can change be made? And the other one would be understanding institutional transition or implementation. Like how can I move people from A to B in a way that everybody feels better after than before? And I think we also talked about these three topics during our regular service design show episode. I posted the link as a comment. So when should that new article be out? When do we hope to publish it or share it with the audience? In the next, by the end of next semester. We don't think in semesters, we think in months. I guess it will be published in June 2018. But I will probably publish some kind of summary of this before on LinkedIn or somewhere like this. So if people have questions, what should they do? They can comment on this post. They can get in touch with you via LinkedIn. Is that what is the best way to post questions to you? Yes, they can just connect on LinkedIn or Facebook or here. I would like to ask the audience. Go ahead. Is there any question, idea that you would like to share and comment? If so, please do. I would be really pleased to. And you'll also be around after we ended this broadcast. You'll be checking the comments on this video. Richard is asking a question. I'll share it on screen. Let's go. So Richard is asking, Mariso, at what level do you expect your graduates to begin within an organization? Because I see almost no entry-level positions within Serbs organizations. Often only very senior levels are recruited. Great question. Great question, Richard. As I mentioned in the previous interview that we had, Marc, we are connected by several HR managers and recruiters of several companies saying that they want to hire Serbs designers. They see the value of it. And they usually ask for five years of experience or what we are seeing because these people with five years, 10 years of experience, they are not available. Exactly. So our students, when we have one of the highest employment rates here at SCAD, SCAD as a whole has a very high employment rate for our graduates. But our students, just to put this in numbers, we are a small program at SCAD. We graduate around 15 students a year. And we are with over 100 open positions available in companies. So all of our students get jobs. And usually the jobs are, although they ask for three years of experience, five years of experience, at the end our students get hired for these positions anyway. So what's the deal there? What's happening? Just apply. But why do they ask for three to five years and then hire a junior? Because they want to have someone with experience, 10 years of experience. We are a very small community. When I say we have 100 open positions, if you think about management, they have 100,000 open positions. We have just 100. And it's even hard to fill those in. Yes, and there's a demand with not enough supply. And we've seen this often. So at first the company, we're going to hire the interview, the candidates, one of our students, and they are pleased by what they see. They hire this junior as a junior research. And we see a lot of things happening. Like they hire the first, and then they hire the second, they hire the third. And then the floodgates open. And then we saw companies that are actually structuring their service design department based on our students, on the grads. That's a really nice thing. It's hard to be a service designer because you still have a lot of explaining and evangelizing to do, but at the same time, it's an open playing field. You can create your own profession and your own work environment, right? That's the awesome thing. Good that you talk about this, because we should keep that always like this. Service design, I don't see service design as any profession actually, but service design especially, it's an open-ended thing. We have to cope with the systemic perspective of things. So it's ever-changing. And this is something that we try to instill in our students here, like keep updated, keep broad, as Steve Jobs say, keep thirsty and hungry, and keep this. Any final thoughts, comments, tips, except keep broad? I guess the tip for service design as a whole is to get better scientific base foundations. We do a lot of research. We try to understand these complex systems. So complex adaptive systems. Next quarter, I'll be teaching a class focused on complex adaptive systems. So how system moves and changes and adapt. So, please don't take this as being academic. Academic is one thing, science is another. Academia reproduces knowledge, science creates knowledge, questions things. Academia says, replicates and reproduces and it's an industrial process. Science is a question process, always questioning, always broadening. And so I guess the main thing would be like understand service dominant logic. Google it if you don't know what it is, service dominant logic, awesome concept. Yes, service dominant logic, scientific methods and complex adaptive systems. We thrive in that scenario. The value, and we've been dealing a lot with companies here. They are eager, the scenario is complex today. It's ever changing. You need to have someone that has this focus on the system. Like focus, the broad focus. That's interesting. We've been up for, I think, 40 minutes in this episode. So I think we talked enough. It's more than the regular episode. We'll be doing a live episode number two next week. And then next week, I'll be hosted. I'll be joined by two guests and we'll be discussing the global service design. Network conference that was in Madrid highlights, I think, two people who actually presented there in Madrid. So we'll be hearing their highlights and hearing their stories. Because you weren't in Madrid. I wasn't there. I really want to know what happened there. Yeah, my colleague, Zina Villada, she was one of the keynote speakers. And she said it was really amazing. Yeah, you're invited to join next week, Mauricio, as a viewer. I'll be posting. I'll be sharing the link just like with this live episode in the coming days. Thanks for joining me on this first prototype, Mauricio. If people who are watching, if you haven't subscribed to the service design show, you know, like the Facebook page, check out what's happening on youtube, youtube.com, service design show. You'll get a new episode every two weeks with smaller pieces of content throughout the week. And if you prefer to listen to podcasts, it's available at servicedesignshow.com slash podcast. And it's getting a lot of listeners lately. It's worth checking out. And finally, we're doing a course on what I call selling service design with confidence. And yeah, I think that that also relates to your topic that we need to spread service design beyond the service design community. So that's that's what I'm focusing on with this course. If you want to know more about the course, check out, it's learn.servicedesignshow.com. You'll find the course there. A lot of talking, Mauricio. It's time for you to start your day at almost nine nine a.m. It's time for me to get back to work. Thanks for being I see some more comments coming in, but we'll respond in chat on the Facebook post. Thanks Richard. Thanks everyone for being in. Thanks Marcel. Hopefully see you in the next live episode next week. Thanks Mauricio. Thank you. Thank you, Mauricio. Always a pleasure. See you. See you. Bye.