Robbie Bates Meet the service designer
In his dual roles as Design Director and Business Director at London-based Uscreates, Robbie Bates juggles the challenges of addressing the evolving nature of service design, and of the service design agency itself. In this Profile, Touchpoint Editor-in- Chief Jesse Grimes chats with Robbie about how the agencyRobbie Bates is a Director at Uscreates, working with organisations to design better services, products and strategies. He is a social designer, mentor, speaker and educator, teaching at design schools around the world.
client relationship is fundamentally changing, and trends in the world of service design.
Jesse Grimes:. At 13 years old, Uscreates counts itself amongst some of the longestestablished service design agencies worldwide. In that time, it's earned a respected reputation based on a strong track record in public sector-focussed service design. Can you share a little more about the type of work your agency carries out, and your role in particular?
Robbie Bates: Seven years since I started at Uscreates, I still find explaining what we do succinctly difficult! In the broadest sense, we’re a service design and innovation agency focused on improving health, wellbeing and public services. Our work is all about designing better products, services and experiences that ultimately lead to better outcomes for people; from health to education. That might be working to design a new preventative mental health service across 90 Touchpoint 10-1
South London, or finding better ways to support those who are being impacted by the housing crisis in Newcastle. My role in all of that is a bit twofold. Firstly, I’m a Design Director. I’m responsible for the quality of our work – ensuring it achieves impact, and leading teams and organisations through the messy and ambiguous design process. It’s often less about ‘doing the designing’ nowadays, and more about creating the right culture and environment so that our teams can produce their best and most impactful work. As a designer-by-training, it’s a big and on-going learning curve for me, moving from being a designer to being a design leader. The second part of my role is looking at where we go next as a design agency. As one of Uscreates’ Business Directors, I’m focused on working with our leadership team to understand some of the big
