 In this episode we'll be talking about how to use space as a design tool, we'll talk about what does it mean to prototype and what does prototyping really mean and we'll talk about what you can learn from the people who make high-end guitars. Here's the guest for this episode. Let the show begin. Hi, I'm Scott and this is the Service Design Show. Hi, I'm Marc and welcome to the Service Design Show. This show is all about helping you build organizations that put people at the heart of their business. My guest in this episode is a teacher, he's the author of the book Makespace, a legendary book Makespace and he's also a musician who has instruments spread out all over America that are now coming back to Austin. His name is Scott Widoff. Scott has a really interesting perspective on how to use space as a design material and I think that's super interesting and important for service designers to understand as our physical environment plays a huge part in how we actually experience services. So we can learn a lot from Scott. It's a different episode than the ones maybe you used to but nevertheless super interesting. If you're new to this channel, don't forget to subscribe because we bring new videos to help you level up your service design skills at least once a week. So that's all for the introduction and now let's quickly jump into the talk with Scott. Welcome to the show Scott. Thanks Marc, cool to be here with you. You know I have to tell you a secret. I'm a big fan. I think I had the first edition of Makespace the day after it was released, something like that. So I'm a huge fan and it's an honor to have you on the show. Wow, thanks. Thanks for sharing that. That was a really cool putting that book together, well doing the work in the book for one and then putting that book together you know with Scott Dorley and so many other people was just awesome and it's been really spectacular to hear how lots of different organizations and people have been using their content in ways that we had no idea that it was going to take shape that way. It's really neat. Yeah and I can imagine I don't know the book is, I checked it before we went online the book is from 2012 so it's seven years ago and do you feel it's still haunting you or are you still happy that it has such a long health life? Oh, haunting, I don't know that's a good question. Haunting is such a loaded word. Actually I mean the, I just interacted with some teachers yesterday in fact on Twitter on the Makespace Twitter feed on there and they were sharing information about how they were prototyping a classroom layout for a new, the new school year, it was a middle school and in that sense if that's haunting I'm delighted to be haunted. It was just awesome and literally I learned some brand new tactics and some brand new needs that different teachers and different organizations are looking for. So in one way that's just amazing. Another quick thing is it's been released in or translated into I don't know four or five different languages now and it is since 2012 you know to now and it's really neat to see how literally like different cultures are interpreting the content and kind of making it not that it was old particularly but making it new in the sense that oh it's now translated for their sort of market or their audience contextualizing it I guess right. Yeah, yeah and it's great it's yeah so haunt away please. Where have you landed now in 2019 what is your existing current role? Yeah it's landed is a great way to put that I feel like I might actually be like a satellite re-entering a different orbit. I just recently moved back to Austin, Texas where I had lived previously I went to school here actually for graduate school in 99 and then worked in in engineering practice here until 2006 anyway I'm back at the University of Texas at Austin at the school of design and creative technologies and I just took a role here as associate professor of practice focusing mostly on 3D design meaning physical stuff like embodied I can touch it I can poke it in an effort to introduce 3D and industrial design to the design program which hasn't been articulated in that way previously. It's interesting really interesting for me to have you on the service design show as a lot of the things in service design are intangible we're designing concepts we're designing scenarios we're designing journeys experiences and sort of the I don't know the chasm between the intangible things and making them tangible is something that I really really enjoy so looking forward to the topics you shared with me just a question before we dive into them which I asked all my guests service design is that a term that you're familiar with and if so do you remember where when you got and maybe also where you got in touch with that well I have a recency bias of course I I fairly recently brushed up on what I think your interpretation of service design is versus maybe experience design or interaction design I think conversationally it first popped up up to me I'd say in yeah when I was living and working in the Palo Alto San Francisco Bay area and it gets discussed as a concept among many types of design sometimes it's there's an effort to differentiate it from another user experience is that service design or experience design in a retail environment for example oh is that service design or is that experience design or is that interaction design so I think that conversationally I'd say well I should say it came up conversationally first among designers who were talking about just the wide spectrum of design it's interesting because I from the guests that I have seen on the show from the US who don't who sort of are more in the California scene service design isn't such a known or widely spread thing well people from more from Dallas in the New York did maybe the East Coast where sort of I don't know it feels that it's more woven into the fabric over there let's not talk a lot too much about semantics let's just dive into the topics because I'm really excited about them I'm ready to do some interview jazz sure let's do it let's do it all right first one topic that is of course we have to start with this one and this one is called using space as a design tool and do you have a question starter that goes along with this one okay using space yeah using space as a design tool a question that I can think of might be more of a provocation actually is when will organizations that are building out new spaces maybe for their organization for different populations when will they actually use space as a design tool as opposed to a designed tool elaborate elaborate because because spaces are designed right that's that's that's what architecture is all about I guess yeah hopefully you know fingers crossed I think there's a yes I they're definitely designed I'd say I'm actually teaching a class right now or prototyping a class in prototyping physical spaces and then putting together like a syllabus for that I was thinking of I had just some concepts but anyway it seems to me that all spaces are designed like whether intentionally or accidentally hopefully we can lean toward the intentional yeah and I maybe accidentally is great if it if it leads to something but doesn't seem like a good operating procedure anyway I'm curious about how organizations I'll be specific say there's a healthcare organization that says oh we want to be more innovative or there's a like a municipal library that's saying oh we want people to act differently in this space or there's a retail environment like a I don't coffee shop we want people to come in here and feel like it's different very frequently that effort is great super cool people are paying attention to the environment and saying oh this is this has impact this actually makes quite a bit of difference it's not just our physical product it's maybe not just our business model our price point it's actually the reality of being here and what does that mean to a user whether that's a customer or participant what it's great there is an interesting I don't know point or threshold at which an organization might hold back on saying ah I want people that come in here to be able to use this space as they want or as a tool in support of a behavior or an activity that they're trying to accomplish so it's not just about having like plywood on the walls to communicate ah this is a rough place and ah that's where we make things it's actually saying oh can you screw something into that wall right now can you engage that wall or it's not just having sort of pretty items on casters it's actually looking at sort of high-end rolling carts for a project fairly recently some really really cool stuff several thousand dollars highly designed beautiful stuff you're like there's no way that someone's going to walk up to that thing and feel comfortable moving it around it just doesn't communicate oh I I'm I have permission I have invitation to move this around so how I think that's yeah let me interrupt you and and sort of the question that's on my mind is there are two questions and the first one is how open and flexible does the space need to be for where's the threshold do you have sort of a sense where where it is and the other question is like if space is a design material what are some of the properties of this design material that we have to be aware of so I think on the threshold that the first question you know how open or how flexible I'm just those words alone kind of get into what's what can be a very common it's almost like it's a highly cyclical or sinusoidal sine wave if you look at it that way and it's it's often super boring to me not the question but the where this goes is oh does an open office floor plan work I think that is a very common topic it's like talking about the weather like talking about oh it's it's very hot here but it's dry oh god another weather conversation so the the open office thing is it can be I think really interesting in in saying yeah maybe an open office doesn't work why doesn't it work well how was it applied in a certain context which I think gets back to the the the much more interesting and you were really astute in in bringing it up was like what is the threshold what thresholds exist so some of those thresholds seem to be things that don't get prototyped or don't get evaluated before a final sort of implementation takes shape meaning if if an office let's take an office like a physical office actually right now for example I'm I'm in what is a prototype of faculty studio offices this is highly unlikely or highly uncommon in a university setting or in a professional setting where you say oh here are I don't maybe 10 people that all have titles and ranks and duties and responsibilities and pride and all these all these aspects which could be translated into needs like what does an office deliver oh it really services a bunch of needs it squishes a bunch of other opportunities but it does service a bunch of needs so when I'm like a broad stroke act of switching an organization say from individual offices or individual owned spaces where people felt a place they felt home they felt confident they felt like they could invite guests they had status when that gets taken away it's uh by traumatizing in the way and it and it elicits fear and anxiety very frequently so you could immediately see oh if that just got taken away well I'm now walking into a brand new scenario at a loss I used I used to have and now I've got what oh that's bad so there's an interesting I'd say necessary step in saying you know this really isn't about an office it's about what are the behaviors that you're trying to support what are the emotions that you're trying to support and then saying okay if we're gonna try something new a let's try something new let's practice with it a little bit and then b let's service those in ways that people can understand or offer them up you know a tiny tiny example is saying okay if you don't have your own private office but you share an immediate space with new colleagues or your colleagues wow you actually get to see what's going on in their world or what's going on in their work that's great okay you know you're gonna have to have a private conversation at some point you're going to have to take a phone call cool how can we support that an office supported that in the past but let's say oh we now still have that need it didn't go away simply because it was you know an office was taking on taken off of a floor plan um so I I think in the that back to the little bit of a diversion there but back to your question about the thresholds uh to me it it shows up or thresholds seem to emerge and saying what are the behaviors that you're trying to support or and encourage um and I would say then design in thresholds or design in permissions that might allow those behaviors and in some organizations those those permissions and behaviors might be less than in others uh which might take shape is like fixed furniture or fixed arrangements or maybe not even a furniture solution but like a norms or a cultural agreement saying oh we're quiet after 5 p.m. here okay that's great that's that that could be a community or a behavioral solution to a what's often perceived as like a space problem um so I'd say the I don't on the thresholds I mean it depends it's kind of a vague answer but uh I think there is something about saying well if you want to create new behaviors you're going to have to support new behaviors you're going to have to signal things um and maybe new in different ways so it's not not a matter of just showing up to work or to your office one day and saying okay everybody it's now allowed to be creative and try new things okay I don't quite know I hear that but I'm not quite sure what that means because nothing around me has changed um so and there's certainly a signaling that that is important when trying to you know change behaviors uh all right yeah sorry I you mentioned uh you mentioned that you're in our prototype of uh how did you the space you're in at the studio yeah kind of a like faculty studio as opposed to you know a hallway of individual offices the faculty studio all right and um the second topic because they let's move into that um it's called relationship with prototyping and maybe we can talk a little bit about this one um you can start with a question starter and then I have another one now ready for you wow uh I well I'm gonna I'm gonna I'll go with this one I like this one sort of um how can we as designers uh I'd say designers and educators this might fall more on the educators part how can we as designers and educators actually uh live up to the expectations that we supposedly teach which is to say uh how do we use our practice to demonstrate our practice right right it's sort of a mentor uh at stanford's name is matt con he was an artist and a designer early from cranbrook uh he had this constant challenge for people which was to say use design to design uh so if you're looking around at a group of people who are designers and teach design um presumably prototyping or trying something as part of a design practice uh I think there's a challenge of how can we make sure as designers we are also prototyping things that's part of our practice as opposed to the just do what I say not what I do so in this case uh you know I think this is quite specific to this room um there's some extenuating circumstances that some remodeling and construction that's going on on campus that coincided with an opportunity to try out new behaviors uh so this is one way to say oh what uh this is an interesting opportunity uh let's now be intentional about it as opposed to accidental uh and say ah let's try something um let's try something new so we're prototyping what it's like to work uh in this way and and some people I think are not necessarily viewing it uh entirely as a prototype they're saying oh this is a temporary thing or it's in between uh whereas many are thinking oh this is cool I'm excited about trying something out and as with a prototype I'm interested in trying something out to see what's next to see in order to do whatever something something in the future and that that's a funny and interesting thing with prototyping because basically um everything is or can be a prototype um even a sort of aesthetic office space could be like a prototype that stays the same for five years so I think the um or at least I'm curious on your perspective on that like the the time frame in which you iterate and learn and progress to the next step that's sort of really important in regards to relationship with prototyping how fast are you actually able to change things you know the gosh you just identified such an important aspect of prototyping that wasn't totally intuitive to me uh for a long time and I know it's not intuitive to students um it's duration so there and there are politics of duration um I'm currently working on a sort of prototyping book where that I've been not playing around with that sounds dismissive but I've been sort of I don't know chewing on this uh a notion of the politics of duration in how a prototype impacts a community or a population that may or may not be aware it's being tested on or prototyped there's a really good book called Tactical Urbanism which came out of an interesting blog one of the authors Mike Leidon has this uh kind of a cool um I don't know if it's not framework exactly because like a rule of thumb which is 48 by 48 by 48 when he thinks about designing prototypes or interventions to test something so what can you do in the first 48 hours which then leads to uh next 48 days and then the next 48 weeks so there's always a notion of this act or this activity has a finite runtime and in that runtime we're hoping to learn something so whether that is the desired output or not uh you know is to be determined but there's going to be an outcome from that it's going to be a lesson yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah so then take those in advance on this kind of incremental thing um step now whether that has to be that exact 48 48 48 it works great with his context but there are a lot of things of saying like uh wow Scott Dorley who's the creative director at the d school uh had a I don't know if this is totally his saying but he brought it up but you know like a thing is only temporary once it gets removed so there's a notion of uh like temporary buildings on school campuses or like a post-it that's put on your wall that's a fundamentally temporary item it was it had uh like a an ephemerality to its design but if it's still around it's not temporary it's it's still there uh so a prototype can I don't know like rot on the vine so to speak like if it doesn't go away a it's not a prototype anymore uh and it may have exactly the opposite impact or effect on the the population you know with which it's being evaluated meaning oh god they just they said this was only going to be a little while but it's been forever and now you're subverting trust and all kinds of other issues there so it's it's really doing yourself a disservice as a designer to I think of a prototype as I don't know something that's um it is it can be light and it can it should have temporariness but it isn't like a trivial topic there's something actually quite serious about it it's got some rules but it can also be quick and light touch and light duty and you can learn a lot from a little you know from a little effort and I think the other topic that you touched upon like duration is a thing but also um intention because if you can call it a prototype but if you if it's not with the intention to learn something if it then it becomes just a thing that's temporary it's right it's we're building the space to learn how people interact with each other or how we can increase social whatever you have to have that an intention in a prototype and you have to have a sort of a time scale yeah I think the you know the intention well actually something I'm constantly trying to do and now trying to figure out how to share in an articulate way with students is uh is how to have your intentionality as a designer show up in your work particularly when it is a prototype which itself is not something maybe that you would buy on a shelf or that you would go down to a store and get or it's not like commerce per se but it is every bit as designed as an output so you know in a prototype experience I don't know almost maybe more so than a final design has to be totally aware of and conscientious of like limiting the number of variables at play like if you walked into a prototype situation and it too closely um sort of aligned with maybe a final output the people running through that prototype might be confused and as a result your prototype might take longer or it might not read as being effective so there's this really strong skill or a skill that can be very strong is to know how to edit particularly when you're implementing a prototype what doesn't matter at this moment exactly and and what shouldn't be there actually that's a I'm borrowing again from Scott Dorley my colleague but the Anton Chekhov the playwright there's this notion of Chekhov's gun which is a perspective that if you're looking at a play theatrically like everything builds sequentially in a logical order on stage so you see oh this happens this happens that happens and so forth so there's a notion that this Chekhov's gun is if you see a gun on stage it's going to go off and in a prototype the notion is make sure everything that scene counts because if it's if it doesn't count it is still seen and it can be very confusing so as a designer a particular prototype designer there's a real sneaky like a skill that needs to be practiced of how to edit and how to distill and the people who are watching and listening to this episode might be thinking I tuned into the wrong podcast or the wrong video this is about service exam but what I what I think what we there are so much to learn about the fact that services a lot of them happen in physical environments and well even in digital environments but I like the physical aspect where experiences are shaped and that's the thing we can actually build and prototype and iterate upon and see how people react when they go through a sequence so that's yeah Scott we need to move on to your third topic because again this is sort of an maybe an outlier liner outlier what's so what's the right English word yeah outlier outlier this one is called small scale builders and I can assure you that we haven't had this one on the show yet so what's the what's the question started that goes along with this one wow I'm gonna go with provided me so many good good topics I'm gonna go with I've got to start with an ellipse all right the wild guard I would say but I think what what can we as designers well as anybody really learn from small scale builders and in particular I would say I'm super interested in musical instruments and I continue to look at small scale manufacturers and builders of instruments as a kind of analogous source of inspiration interesting and there's something quite well there's many things that are quite cool about it but a few things that stand out to me uh so many builders now are trying to find a new identity in a very history rich past that's I mean I guess history and past is redundant but there's something about with regard to guitars with regard to instruments everything having been built by hand you know from chopping down the tree to planing to finishing everything has been done by hand before that's done it's known that's precedent likewise from recent history everything having been built or being able to be built by computer controlled machinery new software new techniques that's all been done or it's been precedented the the future of that isn't known totally but it's been done so those people who are interested in the craft and those people who are continuing to work are now faced with oh uh if I'm choosing to be all handmade well someone did that before me so why am I choosing that am I doing that to be stubborn am I doing that because I want to suffer for my art uh well if that's the case you're probably not going to make that many instruments and perhaps in your business model you might not you know make that much money um that's something that's well known to you ahead of time uh likewise said oh I want to make really high-end things and and want them to feel great and people will think these are authentic and they'll feel great about them and I can crank them out all day long well we know that people often don't have a connected feel or an authentically connected feel to things that are sort of mass produced that often is the case so if you went that route and that's what you thought well you you kind of made a mistake so anyway there's a really interesting uh self identification and self identity that new builders are having to take drawing from these uh I don't know like a a spectrum or a range and as far as designers go whether that's product service experience interaction what have you uh I think there's a really interesting challenge to say you know what you in fact have to draw from a spectrum uh as opposed to being the one single example that's going to be shining and will be it from now on it's foolish I think to to not uh recognize that you're drawing from so many influences that does not mean that you don't have a creative and original future uh however it does mean that probably you're treading on trodden trails to quote Dave Matthews I don't know so that's that's something uh that exists and I think there's back to the like this what can we learn the state of small scale high-end guitar builders has never been as good as it is right now uh nor has the community among those builders been as strong meaning that people are sharing knowledge and people are sharing tools people are sharing adaptations so for example as some type of hardwood becomes unavailable or there's a specific one there's a particular tool that was developed by a guy named charles fox decades ago that had to do with bending sides of guitars and it it involved putting incandescent heat generating light bulbs in this kind of rounded box and uh bending wood around that well it's very hard to get incandescent light bulbs anymore because apparently they're not efficient for you know some light purposes well that uh so that fixturing in that tool now has to be changed and and there's lots of instances where this community is sharing um a lot of information among each other um I think one other thing actually this was you and I were talking earlier about um a role that you once provided as a an IT how would you describe it how would you describe it mark support support guy it was uh in the early days of the internet I was helping people to set up their emails yeah that's great so that's I mean you're like a a scout or sort of like right at the the front of the vanguard I guess like right at the front saying oh here's a whole new thing and here's what has to happen so in some way particularly with guitars uh that has happened in the past was like oh here's broad strokes instructions of how to make a guitar how to make a violin or how to make a banjo that usually were in books and these books were amazing they were effectively like the open source free information and someone who made brilliant guitars now shared all that information in books amazing and decades and decades of builders followed that there is a thing uh that's going on now which I would offer up is like the second tier almost like the safety net of stuff that fell between the cracks meaning like uh I get that if I want to build this I need something that looks generally like this well there's countless instances where you're like well what does that mean or what what are these little in between kind of micro things uh like oh I didn't know that anyway the the same way the same freeness and sort of generosity I think that the older guitar building community had and sharing information and passing that information on it is flourishing currently in many platforms one of which happens to be YouTube which is quite magnificent as a and totally bizarre as a tool but there's all kinds of like secondary support that is so nuanced that it's really upping everybody's game it's like bumping up the skill level of all the builders and I think there's something if if the design community could could look to that for a moment and say you know what there's been so many independent consultancies there's been so many egos and reputations built on being the one um there's now this flip and saying oh it's a value to be an educator you look at like any number of really high-end consultancies that never in the past it did not fit a business model to give away their tactics or their techniques and you can see it happening all the time now where people are flipping these organizations are flipping to the model of oh there's value in being an educator or acting like an educator and educators are saying uh yeah by the way uh now can we just get consultancy pay for being an educator and being a teacher that's a whole other issue but there's I think there's an interesting um or I find it interesting to take inspiration from an analogous example such as you know small-scale instrument builders and say wow there's a flourishing community and there are a bunch of specific behaviors that have served it so well in the past and are serving it well now uh wow maybe we can take those or adapt those you know in a in a parallel path um in service design product design space design just design design design design anyway I find inspiration in lots of uh lots of different spots and music always in one form or another seems to be some kind of inspirational uh fountain this uh this uh pledge or uh your yeah your pledge for our for small-scale builders it really reminds me to a topic that has been on the show a few times and that's the topic of craftsmanship like is there a community of craftsmen uh around that sort of are deeply passionate about the work they do and they share it because they just want to spread uh I don't know what what is it spread spread there the the craft and I think compared to people who are making physical stuff or cooks or where we're not quite there yet not sure why but um yeah it's it's coming wow that is that's really interesting like the a distinction you just made about like people who are practitioners of craft and deep craft uh but whose output is temporary so if you take cooks or chefs you know their their last meal I don't know maybe forgotten and in some ways that's their product uh and in other ways the I don't know repeatability might be a product or finding new inspiration each time constantly surprising it yeah it's yeah uh huh Scott um I know you haven't prepared for this question so that's always a nice one but is there anything is there anything you'd like to ask us the viewers and the listeners of the show anything that we can chew up on hmm well it is a service design show it is uh or it's that by name uh so whether people tune into it for that or not uh I don't know that would be an interesting thing I am curious if if someone is tuning in and listening uh in the context of service design or they were motivated to say oh what what is what does service design mean to me or uh what is important about service design to me uh I'd be curious to know why um and further I'd be curious to know if your interpretation of service design is different than someone else's uh what I don't know what implication does that have or how do you react to that um and whether it's correct or not I'm I'm I'm curious you know when people feel slighted or somehow insulted might be too strong a word but if someone said um well let me side example uh in fact I was when I was at UT Austin as a student I was studying to be a structural engineer or practicing in structural engineering uh in civil engineering at that time um in order to call yourself an engineer like legally and literally call yourself an engineer you could not uh until you were um you had gone through a period of accreditation um which kind of like an internship or a journeyman practice for say a carpenter um number of years you have to go through an accreditation you have to take tests and all this and then you can say oh I'm an engineer in you know the states that's in some ways largely like a legal formality for litigious reasons you know Americans are litigious um but there was something about that and meaning oh I am an engineer and likewise not saying I am an engineer until I'm an engineer architects still practice this you might be a designer at an architecture firm but you're not an architect until you're an architect um so I'm curious now the term engineer uh applies broadly and many many people practice engineering not civil engineering necessarily or mechanical engineering but computer engineering or in some cases electrical engineering blah blah blah there's a whole range uh you know in some way there's like well can anybody just be an engineer or does it mean anything um I don't know if that has to be a a negative thing but there is something about it when you say oh I'm defining myself by these terms I should maybe think about what does or what does that mean to me or what does it not what am I willing to say uh I'm okay if someone else calls themselves an engineer that's great they're doing something you know cool so I that was a long parallel path but I'm curious like for those who are interested in service designer call themselves service designers or want to become service designers what is it about that uh constructor that title that feels important to to pursue and that I'm really curious to the responses uh to this in relationship to the previous topic we talked about about a community of people that just are sharing a craft without going through any sort of accreditation like I'm a guitar builder I'm a good guitar builder I don't have any legal papers I'm just practicing it so that's that's a really interesting topic curious what people will come up with I think you opened a small snake bit Scott let's see thanks so much man it was a pleasure having you on I'm looking forward to your next book because you already hinted a lot that you're working on something so let's see when when dead is out it was great to have somebody from from the fringes of the service design community sharing his his thoughts and ideas it's refreshing thanks so much mark I really appreciate the the opportunity and I really enjoy the show and and your work so it's been really fun for me to be here with you too so to recap Scott's question what makes service design service design and what makes a service designer as a service designer where can you call yourself a 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