Last month we visited the Service design global conference in Madrid. After helping to organise the conference in Amsterdam last year, it was interesting to see if they came anywhere close to ‘our’ event.

And they did, it was a well-organised event, with a lot of high-quality presentations. It’s always interesting to get an overview of what the service design field has been up to and even better; catch up with colleagues and friends.

For everyone who did not have the opportunity to come, here are my service design global conference 2017 highlights from this year’s event. They are quotes from speakers on stage. I have also given some explanation in my own words, of why I think it mattered.

#SDGC17, #highlights

Louise Down

“Technology shows you what can be done, design shows you what should be done”

Most organisations know their technology and are good at making stuff that works and is technologically possible. Designers make sure you build stuff where there’s actually a need.

Xenia Viladas

“All tools are wrong, but some are useful”

E.g. a service blueprint is a simplification of reality. If you make it too realistic, it becomes too complex to work with.

Charu Juneja

“Scaling service design requires getting deep into implementation”

Next to service designing the customer experience, you need organizational design to think how an organisation could actually realise the experience, but that’s not all. You also need operational design to make it actually work. 

Avelyn Kasahara and Veronica Naguib

“70% of all change programs fail, of those failures 66% fails due to a lack of employee engagement”

Their research project showed that employees were rarely included in the design of the change program.

Cat Drew

“We need to move from filling in templates to designing services”

It’s not about ‘following the rules’ of about methodology, it’s about the goal you want to achieve; adding value for the stakeholders involved.

Larry Keely

“Innovation is rarely bold or effective, it needs to be both”

In order to be successful you need to create something badass. Innovation is always tough, so let’s replace the innovation myth (a good idea will at some point ‘pop up’) with structured tools and methods.

Robbert-Jan van Oeveren

“First presentation skill, then comes content”

The next presenter Mikko Koivisko (Hellon) was so nervous, it was difficult to understand what point he tried to make. I couldn’t follow him and checked my mail.

Leah Cabrera and Aileen Heinberg

“Small well designed details have a big influence on experience and can influence the choices people make”

It’s impossible to focus on everything, but we all want our efforts to have the biggest impact. Mastering scoping is really important. You need to constantly zoom out, look at the bigger picture and then zoom in on the small detail to fix it.

Carla Rocha Morais

“Happiness = expectations – reality”

We need organisations where we have more meaningful work. Employee experience design can help to re-invent organisations.

Jamin Hegeman

“I dropped a blueprint and checked back a few weeks later, “Was this useful?””

Turning an organisation into a design-minded innovation machine sometimes requires you to let go of following the rules of a methodology and let them use tools and methods in a way that creates value for them. At Capital one it took almost 3 years before service design started to really take off.

Xenia Viladas

“People don’t want a chair, people want to sit down”

In ‘service dominant logic’ everything is seen as a service. Products are just the physical evidence of a service.

Larry Keely

“If you’re constantly being asked to move faster, you’re not working on something radical enough”

According to Larry companies only take the time to build something 10x better, if it’s only 10% better, they want it tomorrow.

Caroline Chaffin

“The only way to get buy-in is to provide evidence that your solution increases the standard of care”

When trying to speed up the adoption of new technological solutions in OR’s in hospitals, doctors and other personnel might be hesitant. Showing them prove that the solution actually will work helps to get them on board.

Sarah Drummond, Julianne Coughlan and Karen Fitzgerald

“Digitalisation does not mean turning a shitty service into something digital that’s shitty”

Digital transformation is about redesigning the service, not about making what you have now into something digital. 

Xenia Viladas

“Service design crash courses don’t work”

It takes 2 to 3 years to train a student in design, and then they have to start working and really learn. How can you expect someone to be a designer after just a crash course? (It’s about mastering design, nice article of HBR here). 

Interested in the rest of the talks at the service design global conference 2017? Check out this overview of all presentations.

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