Filed under: service design | Tags: amsterdam, birgit mager, conference, engine, service design network
I have spent the last few days at Europe’s first conference dedicated to Service Design. I was also lucky enough to see beautiful Amsterdam in the snow..
In the 168people crowd there were many familiar faces; it was nice to finally put faces to names I have gotten to know. The presentations were all good, some were excellent… Oliver King, co-founder of Engine, most definitely stood out from the crowd.
I left inspired although I have to say I didn’t learn anything new; this was a missed opportunity for show casing and bench marking. I was hoping to learn about successful Service Design projects from the business world, the private and public sector.
I would have liked to learn more from Shelley Evenson from Carnegie Mellon University who discussed Service Innovation within Health Care. She described design as a ‘catalyst for change’, reinforcing the importance that designers adopt a ‘fearlessness of really listening’.
I believe our job now is to develop new ways of communicating Service Design to the public. We need to spend less time talking to ourselves and each other. There is still too many fruitless conversations spent defining disciplines and labeling people; it doesn’t matter how we define it. It is how we do it that counts!
This will require painting the bigger picture; conveying the strong connection to business, strategy and the importance of diving into the customers world.
For me, the last few days proved that the demand for Service Design is growing. It definitely is an emerging field and more people are curious… I hope to stay in touch with the interesting people I met. As Birgit Mager concluded “We need to spread the word. Let’s get started and do it, getting better and better everyday.”
My plan now is to get out into the world and do just that.
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Hi Lauren, it was very nice seeing you again!! We miss you in Amsterdam!
And I agree with what you are saying. I actually wrote something surprisingly similar on my blog :-)
Comment by Arne November 28, 2008 @ 9:29 amHi Arne,
It was so great to see you again! I miss Amsterdam too :)
It will be interesting to see who else shares our opinion!
Comment by redjotter November 28, 2008 @ 11:09 amHi Lauren,
I was hoping to hear more about public sector projects from outside the UK.
Good to see you there though, I am pretty tired now though! 3 days of talk about process, methods and such like takes its toll!
Paul
Comment by Paul Thurston November 28, 2008 @ 11:29 amHi Paul.
Was great to bump into you. I am now wishing I had attended your Healthcare workshop!
I am tired too…all this thinking is making my head hurt :)
L
Comment by redjotter November 28, 2008 @ 12:32 pmHi Paul, I wish I could see more case on design for ´public sevices outside UK, too, but the problem is that there are not many! The only interesting case was the one presented by Elena and Daniela (on the Italian jobsearch system), but apparently it is also quite hard to get info on that because it is still partly confidential.
Comment by Nicola November 29, 2008 @ 7:58 amI’m collecting some cases on design for public service in a wiki (servicedesign.wikispaces.com), but at the moment I only have UK cases. I think I will be able to add some Danish case in the future
It was very nice to meet so many interesting people in Amsterdam, I think the most important thing in those occasion is the quality of links one can make, rather than the content of the presentations.
Ciao
Nicola
Seeing as I wasn’t supposed to be there and ended up gatecrashing the social (for 15 euros – does that count as gatecrashing?) I suppose I can’t really pass comment but…
Comment by Jonathan November 29, 2008 @ 2:55 pmI’m tempted to say it’s a problem with any young discipline that it spends a lot of time defining itself and navel gazing. But I’ve been to lots of design conferences where someone (often the keynote speaker but not always) will get up and pronounce that no one really knows what design is, and everyone will nod sagely. Irritates the he’ll out of me!
I think it sounds like service design is at a point in it’s development where it either goes down the same path, having lots of discussions about how no one really understands it, or down the other, which you identify. No excuses, no existential debates. Just learning.
However I’d be wary of the purely case study approach without analysis and critique. A colleague at Dundee recently complained that every engineering or product design conference he went to had keynote speakers who basically just boasted about the latest things they’d made. Too many design conferences turn into widescreen portfolio jerk circles.
That’s even worse than sitting around wondering why no one understands you…
So yes, avoid the “let’s define service design” approach but also the “look what I did” approach too.
And yes, I miss Amsterdam too. We looked at property prices and it wasn’t pleasant (although admittedly we were looking at apartments on kaisergracht etc…
I think just focusing on the “Let’s spread the word” approach at this point might be a bit dangerous. Otherwise it might become to much of the “look what I did” approach (to use Jonathan’s words from above). At times it still felt like the conference focused on just trying to claim our right to existence. In my eyes it’s time to start going into the next stage of the evolution of the field and start focusing on how to improve the level of work as well as getting SD out to a wider audience…
On a side note, I uploaded my pics from the conference at http://sdn.segelstrom.se .
Comment by Fabian December 1, 2008 @ 10:33 amHi Lauren
Was just doing google research for blog entries about last week’s conference and then I stumbled upon your blog. And then I realized it was you who I met in the students workshop. I’m that kid from Switzerland. Anyway, glad I found you. Just have subscribed to your blog.
Cheers,
Comment by Christian Schlatter December 1, 2008 @ 2:50 pmChristian
[...] of Redjotter comments that while it was wonderful to put faces to names, the next important step is for [...]
Pingback by Service Design conference « Service Design Studio at RISD ID December 2, 2008 @ 3:48 pmHi Christian,
So glad you found me :) Let’s keep in touch
Hi Fabian, thanks for your comment. My masters project is focusing on exactly that; bringing the message of Service Design to a wider audience.
Comment by redjotter December 2, 2008 @ 5:34 pmCheers for the pics link!
Hi Lauren,
it was good to see you in Amsterdam! I just want to leave a brief comment about the “let’s define service design”, “Let’s spread the word” and “look what I did” discussion..
I think all three issues are quite important at this point of development of the service design discipline. I think it’s more a matter of who is talking about what. So far, I couldn’t distinguish projects made by universities from those made by service design agencies. In other disciplines, universities contribute more to the research of tools, methods, etc. and agencies focus on the “real” work. From my point of view, it would be important if those who are doing research should talk about what they do – and a definition of service design would be a quite nice contribution, beside introducing and testing new tools and methods. Those, who did interesting projects should also present them (like Oliver from Engine did it).
And that’s the point. The sdn should work as a platform to bring all together -not to claim our right of existence (as Fabian said it perfectly), but to improve the work of service designers (due to research and interaction and interexchange amoung professional designers) and finally to spread the word of it to the “outside” (wich is -in the end- our market!). But to spread the idea of it, you need definitions, case studies, tools and methods as a basis..
People should get aware of their roles and contribute to “our” community according to their respective competences. The sdn is (as well as agencies and unis) an important touch point for the outside, everyone could use as reference what service design finally is. I tried it in Amsterdam: I asked 10 different designers (uni and profesionals) what service design is and i heared 10 different answers. Just imagine a company trying to get the idea of what service design is and wether it would be beneficial for them, if it is that hard to get an idea what it is..
Sorry, I guess the comment got longer than I expected.. ;)
Comment by Marc Stickdorn December 5, 2008 @ 11:15 amHi Marc,
Thank you for your comment! It was lovely to meet you in Amsterdam…
I think ‘our’ community is growing strongly and steadily and as you said the next step is spreading the word ‘outside’.
I think the ‘definition’ discussion could go on forever…when I was visiting 31Volts in Utrecht they had a sign up in their studio saying ‘ if you can’t explain it well enough you don’t understand it’ and that summed it up for me. I spent alot of time listening to other peoples definitions ( companies, students, universities etc) and I now truly believe it is the ‘how’ and ‘why’ that is more important!
I look forward to our social design project developing. Speak soon :)
L
Comment by redjotter December 6, 2008 @ 8:08 pm[...] will be reflecting on the conference, sharing my insights, and encouraging the University to enable more students to attend such events. [...]
Pingback by Conference Reflections « Redjotter February 18, 2009 @ 7:08 amExcellent site, keep up the good work
Comment by Bill Bartmann September 3, 2009 @ 3:16 pm