Meet the service designer: Katharina Ehrenmüller

In this issue’s profile, Touchpoint editor-in-chief Jesse Grimes speaks with Katharina Ehrenmüller, Managing Director of NEA Design Services in Vienna, and SDN chapter representative for Austria. In November 2014, the Austrian chapter organised the first Austrian SDN conference on the theme of ‘Innovation through Service Design’ with more than 100 participants.

Jesse Grimes: In November 2014, you hosted the Service Design Symposium in Austria. Can you tell us about the focus of the event, and what participants took away from it?

Katharina Ehrenmüller: The Service Design Symposium that took place in Vienna in November 2014 was the first service design event of this magnitude in Austria. Being part of the organisational team, we are very happy to have been able to welcome over 100 participants. Our main aim was to give a fundamental understanding of what service design is and to show its potential, not only for large companies, but also for SMEs. The program included specialist lectures, the presentation of customer projects and hands-on workshops, as well as the possibility of meeting up with the community and the SDN.

I understand that the symposium also attracted attendees from across the border in Germany. Berlin has a thriving service design scene, along with other German cities, and it's good to see such cross-pollination taking place. Can you tell us more about what's happening in the world of service design in Austria? Who is active among agencies, clients and in academia?

In Austria, an active service design community has developed over the past few years. There are regular Service Design Drinks in Vienna and Linz. More that 50 people have taken part in this year’s Global Service Jam. In co-operation with Birgit Mager, the consultancy C PLUS is offering an annual service design course for professional practitioners. Service design is taught at the Danube University Krems, at the FHWien University of Applied Sciences of WKW and at the Management Center Innsbruck. More and more agencies and consultants are integrating service design into their work and some, like NEA, have put a special focus on the topic. First movers like the Erste Bank (banking) have been working with service design for some years now, the ÖBB (Austrian Federal Railways) have even included a service design module in their in-house academy. An increasing number of SMEs and start-ups are using service design to develop innovative service systems. All in all, a very positive trend that the Service Design Network Austria chapter is actively supporting and promoting.

No matter what type of project we work on, we always [put] the (end)customer [at] the centre of attention, either in a co-creative process with our client or in our in-house team.

In 2013, you founded NEA Design Services, and service design is just one part of your offering to clients. How does this multi-disciplinary approach work, and what does it offer your clients?

My co-founder and co-director Isabelle and I met at a university course for tourism management. After various positions in Austria and abroad, we met again in an agency for branding and design in Vienna. Thoroughly convinced of the necessity and the benefit of a customercentric approach, we founded NEA in 2013, focusing on service design and branding. Being passionate about service and crazy about brands, we aim at developing brand-compliant services that inspire and add long-term benefit to a brand. To round off the range of services that NEA offers, we also work in the field of corporate design and corporate publishing. No matter what type of project we work on, we always [put] the (end) customer [at] the centre of attention, either in a co-creative process with our client or in our in-house team. We have integrated service design in several client projects, ranging from tourism to the hotel industry and retail.

Can you tell us more about your work in retail and tourism? Retail seems especially interesting because it is not a sector in which service design is frequently applied.

In the retail sector, we have supported Eigensinnig, a Viennese avant-garde and contemporary fashion store, in developing their business strategy and brand identity using service design methods ( www.eigensinnig.at ). In the tourism sector, we have the pleasure to have been able to accompany URBANAUTS, an innovative loft concept that turns empty storefronts into accommodation ( www. urbanauts.at ), from the start. Last year, we participated in another tourism project for an Austrian destination marketing company. The goal was to generate ideas for the future development of one of their main products, a voucher for thermal springs, using service design.

Katharina Ehrenmüller has founded NEA Design Services together with her comanagement director Isabelle Goller. NEA Design combines branding and service design. She has studied tourism management. Find her on her website: www.nea-design.at