What I stole from Marc Stickdorn

Event: The 12 Commandments of Service Design by Service Design Network Finland & Service Design as a Tool of a Consultant by myself

Time: 1.2.2019, 18-20 & 15.2.2016, 16-17

Place: Gofore Oyj, Urho Kekkosen katu 7B & Fraktio, Antinkatu 1

Fraktio does many wonderful things and one of those is Perjantaipresis, an event open for anybody to listen to presentations by talented people from various fields. I got the honour to speak about service design there, and since I didn’t want to copy all the service design presentation I’ve seen during this past year, I decided to talk about something I know, i.e. what does it require to utilize service design as a consultant.

I had my presentation pretty much planned and ready, when, two weeks before my presentation, I got the chance to meet my service design guru, Marc Stickdorn, at an event organized by SDN Finland and Gofore. I listened to him sharing his thoughts about service design and the 12 Commandments, and after the presentation all I could think about was “he actually said exactly the same things I’ve been thinking about”. So, on I went with adding some #StickInHel quotes to my presentation.

I started from bottom with “It’s all services”. You can’t access a product without touching the services around it, and you can’t offer a great customer experience without aligning the layers around your core offering.

12. It’s all services.

The next commandment that suited my presentation was “Zoom in & zoom out”. As a service designer you need to both focus on the tiniest details and understand the big picture.

11. Zoom in & zoom out.

I wanted to emphasize that service design is more about the right mindset than the processes and tools. As Marc said, we are not designing in order to create beautiful journey maps. So, the next commandment that I wanted to include in my presentation was “It’s not about the tools, it’s about changing the reality”.

9. It’s not about the tools, it’s about changing reality. (And that’s not a walnut but the brain.)

I skipped a few commandments until I found the next one prefectly suiting my needs. Service design is probably 80% about figuring out the problem and 20% about solving it, since the more you know about the problem, the less options you have for the solution. So, “find the right problem before solving it right”. However, as a consultant you need to solve the problem your customer pays you to solve – or convince them that it might not be the problem the actual users would need to get solved.

6. Find the right problem before solving it right.

As a consultant doing service design you need to accept the fact that the resources – money, time, people – are limited. But even as a service designer you can’t iterate to infinity being all “yes, and”. At some point you need to start doing some “yes, butting” and let go of some ideas. “Yes, and” takes you to new places and should be used before “yes, but”, but the latter is important as well if used wisely.

5. Yes, but… & Yes, and… For a consultant, it is important to decide which cup to fill first and make sure the customer understands what it means to the end result.

Finally, I pondered the role of service designer and who can and should do service design. I came to the same solution as Marc that in the end, as a service designer “you are a facilitator” who knows a bit of everything but more importantly brings together the people who really know about something.