Touchpoint Vol. 12 No. 2 - Service Design and Systems Thinking

vol 12 no 2 | april 2021 | 18 €

Service Design and Systems Thinking

26 SYSTEMS INTELLIGENCE AS AN ORGANISATIONAL APPROACH FOR SERVICE DESIGNERS

J. Tuomas Harviainen, Raimo P. Hämäläinen, Esa Saarinen 46 REFRAMING THE SOCIO-ECO­NOMIC ROLE OF DESIGN Sanne Pelgröm, Erik Roscam Abbing 70 IMPLEMENTING POLICY THROUGH SYSTEMIC DESIGN Nourhan Hegazy, Kara Waites

Touchpoint Volume 12 No. 2 April 2021 The Journal of Service Design ISSN 1868-6052

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Published by Service Design Network

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Publisher Birgit Mager

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Editor-in-Chief Jesse Grimes Project Management Moira Douranou Cristine Lanzoni Art Direction Miriam Becker www.studio-mint.de Jeannette Weber www.jeannetteweber.de Cover Miriam Becker Jeannette Weber Cover Image Jeannette Weber Original illustration

by Adobe Stock

Service Design Network gGmbH Mülheimer Freiheit 56 D-51063 Köln Germany www.service-design-network.org Contact & Advertising Sales Cristine Lanzoni journal@service-design-network.org For ordering Touchpoint, please visit www.service-design-network.org/ touchpoint

f ro m t h e e d i t o r s

Service Design and Systems Thinking

As this issue of Touchpoint goes to press, the world is just passing the one-year anniversary of the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. Like every organisation, the Service Design Network was heavily impacted. Our 2020 conference was hastily reformatted to be held on-line, our income from memberships saw a downturn and we relied on governmental support to keep our non-profit alive for several critical months. We were also forced to put this issue on ice, in late Spring 2020.

While we still were able to present a specially-curated issue of reprints from our archive by the time Autumn arrived (Vol. 12 No. 1, “Embracing Change”), it took some time to resume this publication, on the theme of systems thinking and service design. However, I’m confident it’s worth the wait.

We select the themes for each issue of Touchpoint by periodically taking the pulse of our community, and interest in this topic has always been high.

So we are pleased to be able to bring you a collection of articles from not just established service designers, but also leaders in the fields of systems thinking and systemic design.

The growing interest in the field of systems thinking has come about as a logical reaction to the increasing recognition of our discipline, and the greater mandate - and impact - we find ourselves responsible for. When faced with seemingly intractable challenges, in healthcare for example, we learn that our ‘designerly’ approaches only go so far; the traditional tools of service design are often unfit or too limited to help us grasp the intricately-linked causes which underlie a challenge, and our future-facing imagining of solutions may be similarly too limited in scope.

On page 10, Josina Vink - who, alongside J. Tuomas Harviainen, is a Guest Editor of this issue - helpfully contextualises this issue’s contents, from her perspective and experience applying systems thinking for several years. I invite you to use her contribution as a springboard into this issue.

For our valued readers: Thank you for your patience awaiting this issue’s release, and your continued support of the SDN through your membership and participation in our global events and other initiatives. It’s what has kept our organisation alive through a very challenging year.

Jesse Grimes is Editor-in- Chief of Touchpoint and has fourteen years of experience as a service designer and consultant. He is an independent practitioner, trainer and coach (kolmiot.com), based in Amsterdam and working internationally. Jesse is also Senior Vice President of the Service Design Network and Head of Training for the SDN Academy.

Josina Vink is an Associate Professor of Service Design at Oslo School of Architecture and Design. Building on a decade of industry experience, Josina's research develops systemic approaches to service design in healthcare.

J. Tuomas Harviainen is Associate Professor of Information Practices at Tampere University, Finland, a design management researcher at Aalto University, and a freelance service designer.

Birgit Mager, publisher of Touchpoint, is professor for service design at Köln International School of Design (KISD), Cologne, Germany.

She is founder and director of sedes research at KISD and is co-founder and President of the Service Design Network.

Jesse Grimes

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FROM THE EDITORS

6 NEWS 8 FEATURE:

SERVICE DESIGN AND

SYSTEMS THINKING

10 The Systems Turn

in Service Design Josina Vink

22 Complexity Made Tangible

Esther Steiner

J. Paul Neeley

17 Touchless Touchpoints

Kipum Lee, Brittany Merkle, Matthew Zenker, Patricia Colella 4

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26 Systems Intelligence as an

12 Consider Everything

36 Combining Service and

Organisational Approach for Service Designers J. Tuomas Harviainen, Raimo P. Hämäläinen, Esa Saarinen

30 Design for Services in

Complex System Contexts Dr Peter Jones, Kristel Van Ael

Systemic Design in Norway’s Public Sector Benedicte Wildhagen, Ellen Strålberg

40 Non-Linear Approaches

to Service Design Suneet Kumar

46 Reframing the

Socio-Economic Role of Design Sanne Pelgröm, Erik Roscam Abbing

c ontents

Viability

Desirability

Generously resilient

Planetary Collective

Long term triple bottom line

Relational

Indirect financial

Individual

Direct financial

79

Production cell Organisation Consortium Open distributed

50

Feasibility

77 INSIDE SDN 77 The SDN Launches New 52 Shifting Paradigms

Fabian Gampp

72

and Adaptive Services Manuhuia Barcham

60 Navigating the Complexity

of Service Systems Cecilia Lee

64 Using Systems Thinking to

Design a Patient-Centred

Cancer Care Service Jiun-Yu Yu

78 Service Design Award 2020:

56 Designing Resilient

Financially-Inclusive Programme Finalists Selected

82 Going Glocal Meetups – 68 TOOLS AND METHODS 70 Implementing Policy

through Systemic Design Nourhan Hegazy, Kara Waites

74 PROFILE 74 Natalie Kuhn

A Knowledge Exchange for SDN Members

83 SDN Accreditation:

Explore Our New Programme

84 SDN Academy On-demand:

Learning on Your Time, at Your Own Pace

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SDN ACADEMY:

SAVE THE DATE: SERVICE DESIGN

UPCOMING LIVE COURSES

DAY ON 1 JUNE 2021

Join one of the SDN Academy’s upcoming live courses to advance your professional development with new insights and tools. These high quality service design courses are delivered by experienced and SDN-accredited trainers, and the successful completion of courses is recognised with a certificate from the SDN Academy.

Learn more about the courses and sign up at www.sdn-academy.org/

Service Design Day was launched in 2016 and is a day dedicated to service design enthusiasts - a worldwide event to bring together people from different backgrounds and disciplines. Together, we celebrate service design, raise awareness and create impact in the world around us.

Block your calendars on June 1 and use this day to organise your online activities that can include webinars, workshops, Slack discussions, social media campaigns and more for and around the people and places that can benefit from your services.

We look forward to seeing you online on June 1 and celebrating all the great work the service design community is doing to help transform our world for the better— together. Stay tuned for details at www.service-design-network.org/ sdday

Take part via social media using #SDDay21 and #ServiceDesignDay and help raise the profile of our practice.

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2020 SIR MISHA BLACK AWARD WINNER

We at the Service Design Network are excited to announce that our very own Prof. Birgit Mager is the recipient of the 2020 Sir Misha Black Award. This award honours those who have demonstrated distinguished service in design education, as showcased via Birgit’s unrivalled work as the first-ever professor of service design at Cologne University of Applied Sciences.

Congratulations Birgit on a well-deserved recognition of your pioneering—and on-going—role in embedding service design within design education. Learn more at www.mishablackawards.org.uk/ medal/mager

ne ws

THE FUTURE OF SERVICE DESIGN

Dive into articles, comics, inspirations and provocations in the The Future of Service Design, a report generated by conversations with the global service design

SAVE THE DATE: THE SDN’S VIRTUAL CONFERENCE KICKS-OFF IN OCTOBER 2021

The SDN is excited to welcome you once again to our virtual conference, taking place 21-22 October 2021. Did you join us for our online event in 2020? In that case, you know that we will feature an impressive array of speakers and workshops that will inspire, challenge and energise your practice, whether you are early-on in your service design journey or a seasoned practitioner. Opportunities

community, as well as experts and pioneers of the industry. Discover the emerging issues for the still young, yet maturing practice. Enjoy the playful and manifold perspectives, while browsing through this landscape of highly relevant prospects.

Download the report at www.academia.edu/ 44459133/The_Future_of_ Service_Design

to make new contacts and connections that will serve you well in your on-going career pursuits will add another level of value to your experience.

You do not want to miss out!

While details are still in the works regarding our conference line-up and ticket offers, you can stay connected through our various social media channels, Slack, and of course, the SDN Insider newsletter, which delivers those important updates directly into your inbox.

We look forward to seeing you online in October!

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f e at u re

Service Design and Systems Thinking

The Systems Turn in Service Design There is a transition underway in service design that is challenging traditional ways of working. As the scope of service design projects continues to expand, service designers are increasingly confronted by the immense complexity of overlapping service systems. Amid entangled global crises – including climate change, migration, eroding democratic norms and strained healthcare systems – there is growing awareness of the urgent need for significant societal shifts. The discipline of service design is being looked to as contributor and facilitator of these critical systemic changes.

These developments shed light on the limitations and inadequacies of reductionist approaches to service design that fail to support more structural long-term change and risk perpetuating harmful, unintended consequences. As such, many service designers are integrating learnings from systems thinking to better grapple with the complexity of the challenges they face and aid in realising the transformative potential of the practice. However, these learnings challenge the very core of service design and call for a fundamental rethinking of its philosophies and approaches.

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The articles in this issue of Touchpoint highlight four critical evolvements connected with the integration of systems thinking: 1. rethinking the principles of the practice 2. integrating knowledge from other domains 3. applying alternative approaches, methods and tools 4. addressing systemic inequities.

Rethinking the principles of the practice The growing appreciation of complexity calls for a new set of principles to guide service design

practices. Challenging convenient project externalities, Neeley (page 12) responds by suggesting that service designers must consider everything, take universal responsibility and work within grand priorities. In a similar vein, Gampp (page 52) problematises the humancentred paradigm that has been dominant over the last decade and offers an alternative set of principles to support the continued evolution of worldviews. Furthermore, in an attempt to embrace a systemic view on value in service design, Pelgröm and Roscam Abbing (page 46) extend Tim Brown’s well-known model of “feasibility, desirability and viability” by highlighting the importance of the collective, the triple bottom-line and consortia.

Integrating knowledge from other domains As service design takes on larger, systemic challenges, there is growing recognition of the need to integrate knowledge from other domains. Wildhagen and Strålberg (page 36) offer a hopeful example of building infrastructure to support the integration of service design with systemic design in the context of the Norwegian innovation lab for public sector (StimuLab). In addition, Harviainen, Hämäläinen and Saarinen (page 26) argue that service design combines well with systems intelligence to support wise action in complex systems.

Barcham (page 56) further highlights that service design can

servi c e de si g n a nd sys t ems t hinking

benefit from integrating learnings from implementation science and improvement science to create more adaptive and resilient service systems.

Drawing from the fields of service marketing and systems engineering, Lee (page 60) brings forward new frameworks to help service designers appreciate multi-level interdependencies and work with worldviews within these systems.

Applying alternative approaches, methods and tools Many contributors to this issue’s theme highlight that embracing systems thinking in service design requires new or adapted approaches, methods and tools. Kumar (page 40) warns service designers about the dangers of linear thinking and offers a case example that shows the advantages of non-linear approaches in deepening the understanding of reality. Similarly, Yu (page 64) offers an example of a non-linear approach to re-designing cancer care and demonstrates how appreciating complex interdependencies opens up new areas of intervention.

Furthermore, to help guide service designers in their efforts toward taking a more systemic approach, Jones and Van Ael (page 30) outline a seven-step systemic design methodology and introduce the Systemic Design Toolkit that offers a host of canvases for participatory workshops. Steiner (page 22) adds another tool to the toolkit, demonstrating the value of ecosystem mapping for service designers

looking to situate their services in broader organisational contexts.

While many others in this special issue critique the service blueprint, Lee, Merkle, Zenker and Colella (page 17) work with its potential by deconstructing and reconstructing the blueprint and rethinking the concept of touchpoints in the context of Covid-19.

Addressing systemic inequities This special issue also highlights that taking a systemic approach does not make service design politically neutral or inherently positive. On the contrary, it calls on service designers to face the systemic inequalities and power asymmetries that have been designed into systems head on.

Hegazy and Waites (page 70) show a case example of this in their work utilising systemic design approaches to promote the inclusion and safety of transgender, non-binary and twospirit people across service siloes within the Canadian government.

In this issue’s Profile, Kuhn (page 74) highlights that we not only need to look at the inequities in the various local systems that we design within, but this also needs to be done within the systems of service design itself, referring to upcoming work to evaluate outcomes related to diversity, equity and inclusion within the SDN and catalysing targeted action to support structural change.

transform itself. The articles in this issue of Touchpoint offer powerful provocations and hopeful, practical examples of the transformation underway.

Josina Vink is a Guest Editor of this issue of Touchpoint, and an Associate Professor of Service Design at Oslo School of Architecture and Design. Building on a decade of industry experience, Josina's research develops systemic approaches to service design in healthcare.

In order for service design to support the necessary transitions in service systems and society, it must first Touchpoint 12-2

11

Consider Everything Aligning service design practice with our complex reality

As service design practice continues to tackle more and more complex problems, it becomes critical for us to understand the nature of the complex systems that we are, as a discipline, operating within. We must also contemplate how this new understanding of complex systems might change service design J. Paul Neeley is a designer and researcher based in London. He consults in service and speculative design at Neeley Worldwide, optimises happiness with Masamichi Souzou, explores future practice at the School of Critical Design, and tutors within the service design programme within the Royal College of Art. J. Paul holds an M.A. in Design Interactions from the Royal College of Art. jpaul@neeleyworldwide.com

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practice, and what new kinds of value might be created in the world as a result.

The shift Many service designers will have ex­ perienced a change in the nature of the problems they are being asked to address in recent years, with more and more research and design activities taking place at a level of systems understanding and change. For example, we are increasingly asked to look at not just the hospital, but the entire health system, not just the flight experience, but its broader cultural and environmental impact, and not just the treatment of homelessness, but how all aspects of society and policy may create the risk conditions for homelessness to occur.

This expansive shift introduces us to new kinds of complexities, many of which are not well understood by service design as a discipline. These complexities can have profound impacts on mindsets, project approaches, tools, methods and scope, as well as the kinds of re­commendations and inter­ventions

that the designer puts forward to those they serve.

It is tempting to say that it is a change in the world that is driving this shift, and to attribute this new kind of complex work to emerging technologies, social and cultural push-and-pull, new politics, environmental pressures, or other emergent factors. While it may be partially true that these features have changed some of the fundamentals of our shared experience, it is interesting and important to note that nothing has actually changed about the complex nature of the world that we are designing within.1 Rather, I think what we are seeing is that our awareness and under­ standing of complex interactions and impacts is expanding; we are beginning to better appreciate the nature of our complex reality.

Just as the product-centric business and design world of the past may have

servi c e de si g n a nd sys t ems t hinking

ignored many kinds of interactions over time that now define the design of services, service design itself has also generally ignored complex system interactions. And as the product and business world now largely demands a total experience design approach,2 I believe the radical expansion of scope that systems thinking encourages will come to be required of service designers. We’ve experienced how the leap from product design to service design created new kinds of value in the world, and I believe a similar change in impact will come from this shift of service design practice further incorporating complex systems thinking.

Our complex reality Complex systems function in ways that set them apart from non-complex systems, and an understanding of these principle behaviours should become fundamental to every service designer’s practice. For the past ten years, I’ve struggled in my own practice with the related concept of computational irreducibility. There are a number of aspects to the idea, but generally it holds that in systems that are complex, you can’t actually simplify and model the system, because each reductionist step removes important information about the system, rendering the abstraction incorrect. In other words, the entire system is the computation.

“The map is not the territory” is a concept most of us understand well in theory, but the implications of designing in a way where we truly avoid abstraction and the narrowing of scope and scale, and are instead deeply wary of our models, is something very foreign to how we normally are taught, and how we’re incentivised to design. To challenge us to begin to understand and design

1 While I won’t address this here, I will concede that there are also important shifts in the speed of change. The ability to have an idea and communicate it across the globe in an instant, or scale a digital product globally, or for an emergent virus in a matter of months to cross the globe and trigger a pandemic, is a stunning feature of our world, and does create a kind of flux and instability that is particular to our time and that should be understood.

2 https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/mckinsey-design/ our-insights/the-business-value-of-design

within the weirdness of this complex world, I’ve created a set of principles and practices called New Kind of Design, or NKD.3 I’ll share three example principles that outline some of the nature of our complex reality.

One principle of NKD is the idea that “Nothing can ever be isolated from anything, because it’s always connected to everything.”4 This is true even if the connections are very weak or actors and elements are separated by several degrees. Service designers today often escape the uncomfortable nature of this reality by narrowing the scope of a project to make problems more manageable, matching the effort with the time and resources available. How often is “that’s out of scope” the clever thing to say in a meeting to negate a concern and keep things quickly moving forward?

This practice of focus and scope-narrowing really just ignores existing interconnections that may be critical to reaching desired outcomes, and neglecting them may create unseen or undesirable effects. We must remember that anytime we draw a boundary around something and say “this is the system”, we are wrong because we are really just ignoring the connections to everything else.

Another principle of NKD is that “Good is good and bad, and bad is bad and good, and often we can’t tell the difference.”5 In complex systems, value judgements are dependent on the position and view of the stakeholder.

The wild success of a new company is the horrible death of another. The new societal convenience in one part of the world creates slavery in another. The new pesticide innovation that increases yields means the death of insect populations critical to the wider ecosystem. This means that working in and across complex systems demands that we are careful with our definitions of new value and declarations of success, because they are generally made from a particular perspective and fail to address externalities and harm caused elsewhere.

3 https://www.critical.design/new-kind-of-design 4 New Kind of Design, Principle 2 (NKD _ 2) https://www.critical.design/new-kind-of-design 5 New Kind of Design, Principle 3 (NKD _ 3) https://www.critical.design/new-kind-of-design

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The last principle of NKD I’ll share here is “Anytime we do something, we don’t know exactly what we’ve done.”6 Because we narrow the purview of our research and interventions, once a design is placed into the world, we can’t always assess the total impact of what we’ve done across all interconnected elements. The latest AI breakthrough accelerates joblessness, contributing to a mental health crisis. The beautiful new airline experience sees profits rise but also increases flights taken, increasing CO2 emissions further, contributing to global heating. The lockdown protects us from the pandemic, but increases hunger and domestic violence. Some of these knock-on effects are appreciated or predicted now, but are not always considered in the first instance. One thing to be sure is that, as the French cultural theorist, urbanist and aesthetic philosopher Paul Virilio stated, “The invention of the ship is the invention of the shipwreck.”7 When it comes to complex systems, we are very often the creators of new kinds of shipwrecks which we haven’t understood.

I won’t attempt to answer all the intricacies of complex systems here, and these are just three of the seven New Kind of Design principles, but this is just to say that there are acknowledgements that must be made by the service designer about reality as a first step towards humbly working within complex systems.

New practices Once we understand the principles of complex systems, new practices can be deployed by service designers to tackle these issues. An entire science of complex systems and the practice of systems thinking has been developed over the years and can be leveraged by the service design community to provide a wealth of new insight. Again, I won’t cover all of these concepts here, but I will share with you three New Kind of Design practices (Consider Everything, Universal Responsibility, and Grand Priorities) that have transformed my design work, and

6 New Kind of Design, Principle 4 (NKD _ 4) https://www.critical.design/new-kind-of-design 7 Politics of the Very Worst, New York: Semiotext(e), 1999, p. 89

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that I would encourage service designers to play with in their own practice.

Consider Everything - If it is true that every time we consider less than everything we are missing something, then the remedy is to consider everything in our design of anything. While it is not possible in reality to consider everything, I’ve found the very attempt to do so profoundly changes and benefits the design approach.

If the Eameses were correct that “putting more than one client into the model builds the relationship in a positive and constructive way”8 then I would suggest that theoretically you could (and should) continue adding perspectives and stakeholders, with benefit, until everything is included.

Recently, Kate Crawford of the AI Institute and Vladan Joler won the 2019 Beazley Design of the Year award from the UK Design Museum9 for their “Anatomy of an AI System.”10 The project is a “large-scale map and long-form essay investigating the human labour, data and planetary resources required to build and operate an Amazon Echo”, and was created as a way to under­­stand a “wider range of system extractions.”11 It is a beautiful project, but it is also tragic that this kind of exploration feels new and radical to the design community, when every product or service that we design exists within equally complex and inter­ connected systems. Awarding this project reveals how blindly designers are generally operating within complex systems. Our systems maps, stakeholder analysis, journey maps and service blueprints are all useful abstractions, but we typically render them too narrowly.

I would suggest that the kind of extensive exploration that Crawford & Joler have shown us should become the standard on every project we do, and that this kind

8 Statement of the Eames Design Process by Charles Eames for the Louvre Show, “What is Design” (1969) 9 https://designmuseum.org/exhibitions/beazley-designs-of-theyear# 10 https://anatomyof.ai/ 11 https://ars.electronica.art/outofthebox/en/anatomy-of-ai/

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of attempt to consider everything is a meaningful step forward that would improve all of our designs in the world. After an exploration like this, we can be more confident as service designers in our notions of value because we can more clearly see how optimisations or changes in any part of the system may impact any other part of the system beyond our initial focus.

Universal Responsibility - Once we have considered

everything, we have to start to ask, “What are the limitations of our liability within the system? Are we only responsible for the things we care about? Or have been paid to care about?” This limited care is almost always catastrophic to other parts of the system. A remedy is to take universal responsibility for our actions in the system. All externalities that our designs introduce into the system now become our re­spon­ sibility, no matter how many degrees of separation exist between our inter­vention and all other impacts.

One exploration of universal responsibility is a project our studio, Neeley Worldwide, released a few years ago called nightnight.みんな (Night Night Everyone).12 The project is a simple script that website owners can place on their site to put the site to sleep at night.

It takes the visitor’s computer time into account and displays a message suggesting that they head to bed, saying “Nothing we can offer you is as important as your sleep.” The project acknowledges the trade-off that there is a moment in which the value the website owner could derive from the visitor is less than the value the visitor could receive from sleeping. There are of course additional considerations to look at, such as how shift workers may be impacted by an intervention like this (they can click through to the page if needed), but the main idea is that if we take universal responsibility for our designs, then we are responsible not only for achieving the goals of the business we are designing for, but we are also held accountable for all other negative impacts of our designs at all degrees of separation; in this

12 https://www.nightnight.xn--q9jyb4c/

case including protecting the health and happiness of those that interact with our designs.

Grand Priorities - The final practice I’ll share is the idea of working within an overarching and all-inclusive set of priorities. If we are considering everything and taking universal responsibility for our actions in the system, then suddenly a new set of aims and objectives emerge.

The concept of ‘grand priorities’ suggests that we must set any individual project or design work – with its own aims and objectives – within the universe of other goals and desired outcomes. This changes the nature of the conversation about optimisations within a project team, business, organisation, nation, ecosystem and even the ever-larger systems of stakeholders.

One applied example is our experiment which addressed the climate crisis in non-climate crisis-related work. At first glance, many of our client projects do not seem to be linked to the climate crisis, yet our principles remind us that in complex systems, everything is interconnected. Climate.Studio is an effort by our team to remember how any type of work fits within this global list of grand priorities, and – if we consider all systems and risks – the existential climate crisis sits at the top.13 In every talk we present, every client presentation we give, and in every deliverable we create, we start by reminding everyone, “whatever you’re working on right now is probably not as important as addressing global warming.” This forces the team to consider and confront the question, “why are we working on anything else with this kind of existential threat before us?” We’ve found that this perspective and changes the nature of the work in interesting and meaningful ways, leading people to change jobs and companies, or to abandon or accelerate work streams, as they reassess what is most important.

We’ve also loved the work of many practices to focus work within, or connect to, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.14 These are a powerful

13 https://climate.studio 14 https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdgs

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list of global priorities that reflect an attempt to grapple with whole systems. There is more work to be done on the relationships between these goals, and the orders of importance. And it may be that even this list is incomplete, but understanding every service design project you work on within them is a step towards acknowledging the complex systems that we exist within.

A ‘New Kind of Design’ The shift from our traditional service-level expertise to more expansive, systems-wide level of understanding and interventions, will allow service designers to have new kinds of impact in the world. Additionally, the alignment of service design practice to the realities of these complex systems we design within can lead to new mindsets, tools and approaches. New Kind of Design, and its associated principles and practices, such as ‘Consider Everything’, ‘Universal Responsibility’, and ‘Grand Priorities’, are one set of starting points that can challenge conventional service design practice and help us confront our complex reality in meaningful ways. And ultimately this shift and alignment towards understanding complex systems will create new importance for the service design discipline amongst the entities we serve, and radical new opportunities for – and definitions of – new kinds of meaningful value creation in the world.

Continue the discussion on Slack!

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servi c e de si g n a nd sys t ems t hinking

Touchless Touchpoints Redrafting the service blueprint for a post-pandemic world

During the Covid-19 crisis, the Innovation team at University Hospitals of Cleveland worked with caregivers to design a touchless patient experience. Four strategies were used to deconstruct and reconstruct the conventional elements of the service blueprint framework in order to make them useful and appropriate for pandemic response and recovery.

Problematising the term ‘touchpoint’ To say that Covid-19 has shaken our world is an understatement. It has trans­­formed our way of life as we know it. In healthcare – one of the quintes­ sential arenas in which service design is practiced and advanced – it has destabilised our core, taken-for-granted assumptions. With the global pandemic, there is no touch, no body language, no eye contact. According to one caregiver, “A hug is a very big weapon in my arsenal, and I can’t use it right now.”1 Though these new circumstances call for a new understanding of ‘touch’, we recognise that the term ‘touchpoint’ has been an evolving and adaptable concept.

As the designer Jeff Howard points out, ‘touchpoint’ has collected numerous meanings throughout history and in the literature.2 In its contemporary use, the term ‘touchpoint’ fails to fully capture the sense of humanising touch lost due to

Covid-19. As loved ones bury family members from afar, as children celebrate birthdays through computers, and as the elderly go to grocery stores in fear, we have lost so much more than merely the surface-level encounters that marketing and business textbooks describe as the interface between customers and service providers. The pandemic has problematised the deeper sense of human touch, and the term ‘touchpoint’ has to account for this richer meaning.

For ‘touchpoint’ to have relevance today, we must reimagine what touch in its broadest sense can mean; our lives

1 Weiss, B. (2020). The Men and Women Who Run Toward the Dying. The New York Times. [Online] Retrieved April 26, 2020, from https://www. nytimes.com/2020/04/03/opinion/coronavirushospitals-chaplains.html 2 Howard, J. (2007). On the Origin of Touchpoints.

[Online] Retrieved April 23, 2020, from https://designforservice.wordpress. com/2007/11/07/on-the-origin-of-touchpoints/

Kipum Lee is Managing Director of Innovation & Design at UH Ventures and an editor of Design Issues by MIT Press.

Brittany Merkle is Lead Innovation Strategist at UH Ventures and facilitates service design, consumer insights and experience strategy for the health system.

Matthew Zenker is Senior Portfolio Manager at UH Ventures and leads in the identification, assessment and implementation of new innovations for the health system.

Patricia Colella is Innovation Strategist at UH Ventures and supports the identification, assessment and programming of new innovations for the health system.

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Credit: Janina Kennedy

4S Framework with 4 Strategies

Strategy #1 Subtract

Strategy #2 Substitute

Strategy #3 Separate

Strategy #4 Scale

The 4S strategy for service blueprint de- and re-construction

and well-being depend on it. For the sake of practical utility, we propose a two-part approach to rethink the widely-used service blueprint framework. First, a way to deconstruct the traditional service blueprint to make it appropriate for a world in which physical touch is substantially reduced. Second, a way to reconstruct the service blueprint in a way that enhances a new understanding of touch that is more holistic and human.

How might we lose physical touch yet gain closeness and connection? In both cases, we provide examples from our own work at University Hospitals of Cleveland to demonstrate how the service blueprint framework can be revisited and reshaped for practical caregiving in healthcare, along with implications for other industries.

Four strategies to redesign service blueprints Touchpoints are places of opportunity, significance and meaning. They exist not only in static and fixed categories, they are transformable and malleable themselves. 3 Touchpoints worked well when physical touch across services was desirable, but the new

3 Buchanan, R. (1992, Spring). Wicked Problems in Design Thinking.

Design Issues, 8(2), 5-21.

18 Touchpoint 12-2

conditions of work and life due to the pandemic call for a re­ordering of the taken-for-granted elements of the traditional service blueprint.

We first deconstruct by subtracting, substituting and then separating elements from the conventional framework. This strategy consists of taking apart and rebuilding many of the service experiences rendered at the project level. We end with the strategy of scaling many of the reimagined project-level blueprints into a master blueprint that can (re)shape the enterprise service offering as whole.

We call this the ‘4S framework’, which includes the following strategies to reposition and reimagine the service blueprint: subtract, substitute, separate and scale.

Strategy #1 – Subtract

The first strategy, to ‘subtract’, can be defined as the removal of touchpoints that are no longer necessary or potentially harmful. Similar to the game of Jenga®, not every removal of a ‘building block’ of a service results in the collapse of the total service offering. Furthermore, our subtraction strategy is distinct from conventional lean and Six Sigma approaches. Whereas lean process (re)design oftentimes aims to remove pain-points that

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may cause unwanted redundancies and inefficiencies, the primary aim of our subtract strategy is to ensure safety, security and peace of mind. Because of Covid-19, there has been a recognition among many organisations that omitting touchpoints is not just about gaining greater efficiency and saving time.

In our work at University Hospitals, we subtracted the entire grouping of touchpoints which fall under the traditional patient waiting room experience. This included moments of waiting upon arrival in the ‘waiting’ room, as well as waiting to be called back to be seen by a caregiver in the exam room. Using a mobile technology solution, our team collaborated with stakeholders to take the waiting experience out of the hospital environment.

Instead, patients could either arrive just-in-time to their appointments based on contextualised text messages, or wait in the preference and safety of their cars until notified by the front staff.

The frontline caregivers also welcomed this change because minimising the number of individuals sitting in a shared space reduced their own risk of getting ill.

The removal of chairs from the waiting room to promote physical distancing may have also had a secondary benefit: nudging would-be dwellers in the waiting rooms to go back to their vehicles. In a post-pandemic world, where safety and peace of mind will continue to be of paramount importance, the strategy of subtraction based on human-centred principles and institutional logics such as ‘safety’ provides one way to reimagine the service experience.

Strategy #2 – Substitute

The second strategy of the 4S framework is ‘substitute’.

It is similar to ‘subtract’ in that something is removed, but different in that something else is intentionally added back as part of the service provider’s offering.

In our team’s contribution to the Covid-19 response effort, we looked for opportunities within the existing service experience to see if there were potentially risky interactions that could be replaced with something safer.

In one of the opportunities, we replaced human-tohuman navigation services. At University Hospitals,

there is a culture where busy caregivers – including senior executives – go out of their way to personally take a lost visitor to their destination. This great asset became a high-risk interaction in the thick of the pandemic. For the safety of our visitors, we led the implementation of a mobile wayfinding technology at our sprawling main campus, replacing human-to-human encounters.

Similarly, we also introduced a sophisticated chatbot technology to empower patients to check their symptoms and answer frequently asked questions, general or specific to Covid-19. This substituted for interactions that typically would have occurred in-person or would have required a substantial amount of caregiver time.

In addition, along with many other health systems, we provided access via telemedicine to replace the in-person provider-patient interaction wherever and whenever it was appropriate. We anticipate these substitutions are here to stay.

Strategy #3 – Separate

We define the third strategy, to ‘separate’, as the creation of a wholly new kind of experience, distinct from what is available in an organisation’s existing service framework.

Separation – or ‘sanctification’, to use a religious term that resonates with faith-based health systems where the ‘sacred’ patient-doctor interaction is prioritised – can be used to ‘set apart’ something in order to shield it from the pressures of the current system, or to give a nascent service prototype the opportunity to develop and thrive.

For example, we recognise that monitoring and providing care that typically takes place within the environment of a hospital could and should occur instead in the comfort of a patient’s home whenever possible.

Galvanised by the mantra “from healing in the hospital to healthy at home”, we worked with the clinical trans­ formation office to craft a new experience for patients.

Rather than risking exposure to infections and treating them in the hospital, we sought out solutions that separate the new from the established.

Because one of the critical issues during the pandemic has been the limitation of available hospital beds, the use of a technology that continuously and remotely monitors Touchpoint 12-2 19

Line of Orchestration and Back of the Back Stage Physical evidence Consumer journey Consumer action Line of interaction Front stage

k)

Line of visibility Back stage Line of orchestration Back of the back stage

Internal interaction System/ processes

The line of orchestration and ‘back of the back stage’

patients’ vital signs has made it possible to send people back home (oftentimes sooner), where they are safer and more comfortable. As health systems typically do not have visibility into what happens to patients once they leave the hospital facility, this solution has made it possible to be more closely connected with patients despite being more physically apart. Through these monitoring examples, it is possible to imagine a world where greater physical distancing does not mean greater detachment; a thoughtful strategy of separation can lead to better care and connection.

Strategy #4 – Scale

We define the fourth strategy, to ‘scale’, not only as the successful adoption of a pilot or solution across an enterprise, but as the meaningful impact of service design on a system or community. When scale is the lens by which the traditional blueprint can be taken apart and reordered, the three strategies of subtract, substitute and separate are activated and applied to the system and even society at large.

Beyond direct patient care, a health system’s other responsibility and mission is to provide care for the 20 Touchpoint 12-2

public and the overall well-being of the community. How might one organisation’s outflow of activities based on a renewed service framework contribute to something larger than itself?

Covid-19 has only accentuated that every organisation is in some way a healthcare organisation. For example, Starbucks spends more on employee health than they do on coffee beans. Likewise, many organisations spend more on healthcare than their own core offering or product.

Through this lens, even goods-based, manufacturing companies are also service-based companies. Covid-19 has amplified the role that organisations and management must fulfil to ensure the well-being and safety of their employees and customers.

In Northeast Ohio, University Hospitals has been described and featured as an anchor institution.4 An institution is more than just a transactional organisation;

4 Serang, F., Thompson, J.P., & Howard, T. (2013). The Anchor Mission: Leveraging the Power of Anchor Institutions to Build Community Wealth. [Online] Retrieved April 30, 2020, from https://communitywealth.org/content/anchor-mission-leveraging-power-anchorinstitutions-build-community-wealth.

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it is a social system with potential to supply and support human-centred values.5 Especially in times of crisis and need, the hospital can become a symbol of hope and trust as it serves the surrounding community.

As our community transitioned from a posture of pandemic response to one of recovery, our team was entrusted with putting together a Community Healthy Restart Playbook containing recommendations on how to reopen businesses and public institutions safely.

Discontent with the dense and oftentimes conflicting information put forward by regulatory and policy-making agencies, community members and leaders wanted to know what this all really meant. They looked to our hospital, and, in turn, our hospital looked to our team, to provide a human-centred way to present and socialise life-preserving information and healthy community action. This makes design a noble service.

Coda: Management and the systematisation of services In scaling a ‘touchless’ framework, we had to introduce a new element to the well-recognised service blueprint. For design to take hold and permeate across a system, there has to be engagement with the overarching strategy of the organisation. The perspective of formal leaders and management, which can make or break a service design initiative, is an integral glue in the rebuilding process.

For this reason, we introduced a ‘Back of the Back Stage’ layer to capture the governance and strategic role that decision-makers and leadership have in crafting services.

This new layer calls for a ‘Line of Orchestration’ to delineate the separation between the actors on the ‘stage’ and management. For service design to be relevant and impactful, it is important to include and make explicit managerial actions as part of the blueprint framework.

This Line of Orchestration illustrates the unity across the various structures, similar to the orchestra pit that provides the harmonious backdrop for the performance and scene-crafting that takes place on stage.

Like the powerful role that a good score plays in a moving film, the design role of management must be present for an organisation or community to operate and innovate as a holistic system. Now more than ever, there is a need in healthcare and other service sectors to design for touchless interactions; this can only happen if the frameworks used to discuss and present service design integrate the larger idea of the organisation as a system and not just as a collection of services.

Re-formation of service design by service design Taken as a whole, the four strategies of deconstruction and reconstruction point to a reimagining of the conventional service blueprint. It helps to recall the paradoxical Ship of Theseus from Greek mythology: Does an object that has had all of its components replaced remain fundamentally the same object?

If we subtract, substitute, separate and scale the service blueprint as we know it – transforming it to a ‘touchless’ form – does it remain the same thing? Just as this paradox has confounded many philosophers through the ages, we hope it stirs much discussion among practitioners on what is really the essence of service design. In particular, what is the utility and power of a ‘touchpoint’ in a world marked by the absence of touch? In general, what might it mean for service design as a discipline and its available tools to have dynamic form? As a living and evolving discipline, may service design continue to be a resource that delights individuals and also a means to rebuild our society and ourselves, one touch and moment at a time.

5 Lee, K. (2020, Autumn). From Margin to Institution: Design as a Marketplace for Action in Organizations. Design Issues, 36(4), 5-19.

Touchpoint 12-2 21

Complexity Made Tangible Designing impactful services by mapping organisational ecosystems

In the 1950s, Walt Disney recognised the potential of building organisational ecosystems and extending his brand into other industries. How did he identify opportunities? How did he decide which ones to take advantage of and which trade-offs to make?

Many factors will have contributed to the decisions he made.

Esther Steiner is a strategic design specialist helping organisations leverage the potential of design. Esther consulted on a variety of innovation and design projects with clients in the FMCG, furniture, hospitality, insurance and finance industry. She develops design and innovation strategies that make business sense. esther@graft.global

However, there is one artefact that could have prompted many of them – the Disney business ecosystem drawn up in 1957.

It illustrates how various business activities and their outcomes enable other parts of the organisation to thrive. Service designers are uniquely positioned and skilled to make sense of the ecosystems they’re in and leverage gained insights to build outstanding organisations just like Disney.

Organisational ecosystems at work While such well designed ecosystems are more prevalent today, there are many more organisations who would benefit from a more codified approach. Systems thinking approaches can be adopted to understand complex structures, providing the requisite tool to recognise untapped opportunities for value creation. The skills and capabilities of service designers, coupled with their organisational reach, enables them to make sense of their complex organisational environment.

As a result, they can increase the impact of their efforts to create value far beyond their local function, business

22 Touchpoint 12-2

unit or product team. In the course of our consulting work at Graft Design and Innovation Management Ltd., we produced case studies that illustrate the creation and distribution of value across organisational ecosystems. Spanning a range of sectors, this research resulted in a systems thinking approach to map complex systems and use those to inform the design of ecosystems and services.

Service designers typically find them­ selves engaged in the conception and delivery of discrete service innovations for organisations. Taking a wider view on the ecosystem of stakeholders that exist around organisations, however, might be

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where service design has the greatest potential for value creation. The following two examples illustrate how taking a wider organisational view has enabled Red Bull and Amazon to reframe their propositions and expand into other industries, much like Walt Disney almost 70 years ago.

Red Bull: A circle of brand presence, product sales and experimental investment By looking at the brand as part of a wider organisational ecosystem it can be seen that Red Bull is a sophisticated media company that uses the revenue from its energy drinks to fund sports assets and sponsor athletes.

content

which Red Bull itself turns into entertainment with its own media house.

All the elements have a role in building the inter­ connected value streams in this organisational eco­system: the energy drink is a vessel carrying the brand, with this product and its revenue Red Bull funds events, teams and daring expeditions. In turn, this generates content to market the brand and thus the sale of energy drinks.

Amazon Echo: Industry expansion with a sub­ scription and a talkative device Amazon’s well-known marketplace is merely the tip of the iceberg. With a future vision in ‘Internet of Things’ (IoT) Amazon has quickly expanded into other industries and built a new business model. It is not a retailer, it is a fully automated, contemporary servant of modern day life – all for the affordable price of a Prime subscription.

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in g

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Dietrich Mateschitz, the co-founder built a brand persona that is intricately linked with extreme sport.

Red Bull does not only strengthen this connection by hosting sport events or sponsoring athlete ambassadors, but also by owning teams such as Red Bull Formula One, making them an asset and revenue generator. This is in contrast to other brands who merely seek sponsorship deals for visibility. All these activities generate content,

AMAZON MARKET PLACE

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AMAZON PRIME ALEXA s ale s ive dr a da t s e pro c AWS re v e n u e

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Fig. 1: The Red Bull ecosystem value stream

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Fig. 2: The Amazon value link transformation

Once subscribed to Amazon Prime users find themselves buying more on the marketplace than before due to benefits such as exclusive offers, free and next day deliveries. For Prime customers the benefit of buying a Touchpoint 12-2 23

What are the organisation’s key capabilities?

What are the organisation’s key distribution channels?

IMMATERIAL ASSETS brands, skills

v y t ar n m o n e re v e e. g.

What are key brands and their valuable assets?

PHYSICAL ASSETS capabilities, spaces

a u e lu e

PROPOSITIONS products, services

nal valu e ot i o em ust, attent ion . tr e.g

Who are the key stakeholders inside or outside the organisation?

n t tio ten n

data and info rm a knowledge . ,c e.g o

What propositions, products and services does the organisation provide?

STAKEHOLDERS functions, units, partners, clients, customers

What fuels the sales of products and services?

What value is brought to stakeholders and what value is gained?

What impact does a product, service or brand (nodes) have on the wider organisation and other stakeholders?

Fig. 3: Assembling nodes and value links to build organisational ecosystem maps

voice assisted device such as the Echo, is obvious: the biggest online marketplace at one’s command. Once inside the system, customers can extend the capabilities of their virtual assistant to control light switches, locks, vacuum cleaners and thermostats, all shopped for on the online marketplace. Amazon extends its IoT ecosystem with foresight – smart homes will be called Alexa. The AI runs on Amazon Web Services (AWS). Due to its immense computing and storage power, running Alexa is a small feat for the cloud service provider. By having the infrastructure in place, Amazon can now offer this computing power and cloud storage space to third party business customers.

With some simple but attractive benefits Amazon Prime lures customers into shopping for its private label product range, thereby generating revenue to build a cloud storage empire that runs the AI and other companies’ processes. These services in turn generate revenue that enables the business to expand its smart home device range. The data that is collected from interactions with Alexa facilitates the improvement of Prime offerings and drives even more subscriptions.

Value flows in several directions simultaneously.

24 Touchpoint 12-2

Both Amazon and Red Bull have tied together business units and brand assets to transfer and transform value generated between nodes in their ecosystems. With that they have successfully reframed their value propositions to enable growth into other industries, building propositions that cannot easily be copied by their competitors.

Despite being simplified, these examples clearly demonstrate that by zooming out into the macro context of an organisation, opportunities to build an organisational ecosystem are revealed.

Applying ecosystem mapping If service designers want to situate their services in the broader organisational ecosystem they need to be able to make sense of it. Service designers’ ability to use visualisation not only for communication but also as a tool to guide processes, enables them to make complex systems more tangible. By mapping nodes, and the value links between them, organisational ecosystems can be investigated. Ecosystem maps have much in common with ‘Giga-maps’1 however, they specifically aim to visualise the transfer of value – that flows across the

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systems that operate within and around organisations – to understand the impacts of products, services and propositions at large. We are using the term ‘ecosystem’ here as it signifies the presence of actors (nodes) that are linked (value streams) in a complex web2 .

Nodes are used to build the backbone of an ecosystem and either generate or absorb value. Value links connect organisational nodes; they are transformable and trans­ ferrable across the ecosystem; and either generated or consumed by the nodes.

Looking beyond one’s immediate business unit and function is key. There are for example internal value links, such as effective employee training programs that result in high retention and superior service delivery.

Outside the organisation there might be valuable partner­ships or unexpected use cases of products that inspire new propositions. IKEA Hackers is an example of customers inspiring new product development by repurposing IKEA products. On the other hand, Nike has developed several products to engage fans that were unsuccessful in generating meaningful value for other parts of their ecosystem. To reveal such weaknesses and opportunities, service designers can exploit their combined skills of generative thinking, research and analysis that facilitate the assembly of such detailed, comprehensive ecosystems. These maps can help assess an organisation’s untapped potential and be used as a tool to inform the design of services in their broader context, or even reformulate ecosystems themselves.

Conclusion The value streams revealed by visualising an organisational ecosystem can lead to stronger and more beneficial relationships between the constituent parts of a company’s propositions, operations and capabilities, thereby increase organisations’ resilience and dramatically reshape their ‘reason for being’. Service designers are a potential catalyst for organisational transformation as they have the skills, capabilities and cross-functional reach to understand the ecosystem thereby shape and build it.

Walt Disney famously mapped his ecosystem. The company he built has withheld many crises and is still one of the most beloved brands in the world. While his ultimate ecosystem vision of a utopian city never came true, Disney is still here and has inspired dreams of organisational transformation ever since.

1 Sevaldson, B (2011). Giga-Mapping: Visualisation for complexity and systems thinking in design. Nordic Design Research Conference 2011 Helsinki, www.nordes.org 2 Mars, M. M., J. L. Bronstein, and R. F. Lusch. (2012). “The value of a metaphor: Organizations and ecosystems.” Organizational Dynamics, 41 (4): 271-280.

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Systems Intelligence as an Organisational Approach for Service Designers In this article, we discuss the advantages of systems intelligence (SI) for organisational service design, and how to apply its principles. Systems intelligence is a combination of systems thinking and pragmatic approaches, implemented together with a philosophy of life.

J. Tuomas Harviainen is a Guest Editor of this issue of Touchpoint, and Associate Professor of Information Practices at Tampere University, Finland, a design management researcher at Aalto University, and a freelance service designer. tuomas.harviainen@tuni.fi Raimo P. Hämäläinen is Professor Emeritus of Operations Research at the Systems Analysis Laboratory in Aalto University, Finland, and co-director of its Systems Intelligence Research Group.

Esa Saarinen is Professor of Applied Philosophy at Aalto University and co-director of the Systems Intelligence Research Group.

Systems intelligence (SI) is an organisational improvement paradigm that was first discovered and developed as a concept by Esa Saarinen and Raimo P. Hämäläinen in 20041 , based on ideas from earlier systems thinkers such as Peter M. Senge. It is, in their words, “intelligent behaviour in the context of complex systems involving interaction and feedback”. The key idea is that any organisational setting, whether it is a family, school, or a business, can and should also be seen as a system.

Furthermore, this work suggests that a system consists of the dynamics of the people engaged in the system, as well as of the structure of its organisation and its communication patterns.

When acting in a setting like this, we always become parts of the system; we cannot act from outside the system. A ‘systems intelligent’ person understands

1 Saarinen & Hämäläinen, 2004.

26 Touchpoint 12-2

this and takes into account both the existing organisational systems and their underlying processes. Such people may, however, be experts within one organisation, but clueless regarding other organisations. Service design is able to bridge this gap. In service design, the actors who create the system may include the different design experts involved, as well as representatives of the expected users of the system. Understanding stakeholder groups and their interests in systems is a core skill of service designers, which is why they may be the best providers of systems intelligence.

Earlier research has recognised that being systems intelligent consists of four pairs of connected factors. These are: 1) Perceiving systems: systemic perception and attunement, 2) Thinking about systems: reflection and wise action, 3) Systemic attitude: positive attitude and spirited discovery, and 4) Action: positive engagement and effective responsiveness.

Together, these form a framework of not

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just organisational skills and perceptions, but also of a positive presence in an organisation.

What makes systems intelligence of further interest is that it has been validated with middle managers, not just people on the top strategic level or at the operative level. Systems intelligence is also a great fit with the existing capabilities of service designers, who are versed in bringing forth various types of stakeholder knowledge through the use of diverse methods. This article gives designers a ‘grammar’ to work with, and a mental checklist of the traits that can and should be developed through the application of service design methods in cases where organisational change is sought.

We believe that this is particularly important, because service design is now also being applied in areas outside of new service development. We are seeing a significant increase in the number of service designers acting as strategy consultants, informing organisational re-­ structuring, or doing choice architecture. Relevant to all of these areas, systems intelligence offers service designers an additional professional competence, and a more human-friendly approach to organisational change.

Systems intelligence Systems intelligence is an organisational capability that can be cultivated through organisational culture and developed in individual members.2 To understand systems, one must first observe them. This is why systemic perception is the first of Systems Intelligence’s eight traits. But good perception goes deeper than observation. It is also the ability to see what is essential in that system, how its processes function, and remembering both details and the big picture.

Attunement is about being ‘present’, about approaching

others with warmth, and appreciating the inputs and viewpoints of various stakeholders. It is one of the most difficult areas of SI to systematically develop, but on the

2 Törmänen, Hämäläinen & Saarinen, 2016.

other hand, fits very well with service design’s multistakeholder and co-creation approaches.

Reflection deals with understanding multiple

perspectives and evaluating potential consequences.

It also includes trying to understand the origins and underlying assumptions of one’s own viewpoints, and a desire for further personal growth.

Wise action involves having patience to realise good

results, a willingness to take advice, sound judgments, and a general persistence in the face of adversity. Wise action may be a difficult aspect for some service designers and their clients to develop, especially if they come from a business background that emphasises the start-up creed of ‘failing fast, often and forward’. It is therefore very important to see that also those steps, especially rapid prototyping, should not be just done in haste, but are about making the right measures early on, in order to get better results later. Wise action leads to better design.

Maintaining a positive attitude in this context means not only looking forward to the future, but also seeing difficulties as opportunities. It is about owning up to one’s own mistakes instead of explaining them away.

Spirited discovery, in turn, fosters innovativeness, creativ­

ity and playing with new ideas. This discovery is one of the areas closest to much of service design, and a good starting place for many Design Thinking practitioners to begin their work on wider organisational transformation.

Positive engagement is the most visibly social trait. It

means contributing to the positive spirit of the or­gani­ sation, giving positive feedback, alleviating tensions and trying to bring out the best in others. Positive en­gage­ment is about putting many of the other systems intelligence traits into active practice. Likewise, effective respon­siveness is also about preparing and being ready for new ideas, prioritising things the right way, not giving up easily, and fixing problems when they are found. It is often the technical counterpart to the more social side of positive engagement.

Touchpoint 12-2 27

The interested reader can find more material on SI on the research group’s web site (http://systemsintelligence. aalto.fi/). The site also has a link to a personal SI test, which can be used as a way to reflect on one’s own way of thinking and acting.

Each of these eight factors are improved in slightly different ways, but they overlap so much that some general statements can also be made.

Applying these principles in action Service design is an excellent partner for fostering systems intelligence. Both service design and systems intelligence are more mindsets than methodologies, and they emphasise multiple, complementing compe­tencies.3 Different service design tools can support the develop­ ment of various systems intelligence compe­tencies.

For example, service blueprints and customer journeys give insight into particular issues, but rarely discuss empathy beyond the initial reaction. Classic service design tools are good fit with spirited discovery, but not necessarily with the other several other systems intelligence areas.

As a general rule, a service designer looking into enhancing systems intelligence should always keep in mind that SI is, at its core, about a person’s internal capabilities, manifested in the social practices of the organisation. Because of this, co-design methods that emphasise positive sociality and the seeing of other members’ relevance are particularly suitable for this task.

SI is an area where one can especially use role-plays, bodystorming and other very physical methods that create, reveal and assist relationships.

3 See e.g., Luojus & Harviainen, 2016; Stickdorn et al., 2018.

28 Touchpoint 12-2

We have found three specific tools to be especially suitable for improving systems intelligence. One of these are systemic constellations, in which people position themselves in relation to each other in the organisation in a symbolic manner. This tool can work wonders for making organisational distances – mental and structural – much more visible. It is then possible for the designer to bring in other tools and see how things may be adapted.

A slightly similar tool is the intra-organisational relationship web. To visualise this, people write their names on a chart in small, mixed groups, and then draw their relationships with lines. They also record the nature of each relationship. If they are unable to all connect to each other directly, they add names in the middle in a different colour, and draw lines via those.

This way, large segments of an organisation’s internal dynamics can be revealed, but without the entire map becoming too complex.

Fig. 1: A systems intelligence Topaasia deck https://topaasia.com/en/product/topaasia-systems-intelligence/

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In addition, design games seem to be particularly suited for systems intelligence. Games that function as discussion tools give equal voice to different stakeholders, and by their rules they can require or recommend respectful turn-taking, leading to positive attitude and spirited discovery.4 Their debriefing methods, in turn, provide guidelines for wise action and effective responsiveness. And very interestingly, games often also reveal attunement: When stating things during play, people give out many silent cues on good ideas, on what seems uncertain, and so forth. For this reason, we have lately been experimenting with a variant of a design card game, Topaasia, designed specifically for systems intelligence (see Figure 1).

References 1 Hannula, O. & Harviainen, J. T. (2018). User perceptions of design games as settings for organizational learning: Case Topaasia Cards.

In Meroni, A., Ospina Medina, A. M. & Villari, B. (Eds.) Service design proof of concept: Proceedings of the ServDes 2018 Conference (pp.

427-439). Linköping Electronic Conference Proceedings.

2 Luojus, S. & Harviainen, J. T. (2016). Designing for service experiences.

In Turner, P. & Harviainen, J. T. (Eds.), Digital make-believe (pp. 67-88).

New York, NY: Springer.

3 Saarinen, E. & Hämäläinen, R. P. (2004). Systems intelligence: connecting engineering thinking with human sensitivity. In Systems Intelligence - Discovering a Hidden Competence in Human Action and Organizational Life, 9-37.

4 Stickdorn, M., Lawrence, A., Hormess, M. & Schneider, J. (2018). This is service design methods. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly.

5 Törmänen, J., Hämäläinen, R. P. & Saarinen, E. (2016). Systems intelligence inventory. The Learning Organization, 23(4), 218-231.

Discussion A good service design workshop is open to new ideas and a “yes, and” attitude. This combines extremely well with the principles of systems intelligence, which includes a positive philosophy of life.

Research conducted by Aalto University’s Systems Intelligence group has shown that not only can these eight traits be taught in organisations, but that the organisations which develop these traits are seen as better workplaces. The positivity inherent in looking at organisations, their leaders and middle management from this perspective makes the clients of a service designer seeking to improve SI often highly welcoming.

The abstractness of the SI concept, on the other hand, may also require some business terminology, and grounding in business canvases and promises of good KPIs. Luckily, a good service designer is easily able to master both SI and the business terminology, and to adapt various approaches as needed by the client organisation.

Touchpoint 12-2 29

Design for Services in Complex System Contexts Introducing the Systemic Design Toolkit The Systemic Design Toolkit provides the only complete systems methodology for designers, with over 30 system modelling canvasses designed for participatory workshops. Validated through dozens of applications, academic training and workshops, the Toolkit bridges systems thinking, human-centred design and Dr Peter Jones teaches sys­temic design at Toronto’s OCAD University MDes pro­grammes, and is a co-founder of the Systemic Design Association and RSD Symposia series.

He’s managing partner of the Redesign Network, an inno­ va­tion research firm, leading systemic and plat­form design and research in health­care, informatics, economic and social sectors. pjones@ocadu.ca

Kristel Van Ael is managing partner at Namahn, a humancentred design agency based in Brussels. She is the lead author of the Service Design and Systemic Design Toolkits. Kristel is also co-teacher in productservice-system design and lead teacher in systemic design at Antwerp University (Faculty of Design Sciences) in Belgium. kvae@namahn.com

30 Touchpoint 12-2

service design approaches to address complex systems contexts.

Service design at systems scale Systemic design has developed as a dis­ cipline through research and con­tin­uous practice innovation for about a decade.

In service design, we often discover challenges that interact with larger systems, often seen as service infra­ structure. When service design chal­lenges expand in scale and complexity to ‘system level,’ user-centred design methods fail to match the required complexity.

Personas, journeys and blueprints serve well for complicated organisational processes and digital services. But when organisational challenges overlap the boundaries of complex systems, including public services, infrastructures, policies and natural ecosystems, the challenge space for design shifts from complicated to complex. Conventional design practices lack the tools to describe and model viable solutions sufficient to high complexity.

Designers are increasingly called to address transformational challenges

for which we have little academic or practical training. As creative design firms working on large-scale services or digital platforms, we may demonstrate ‘beginner’s confidence’ when engaged to design for complex organisations or systems. Most service design projects create processes for an organisation’s offer to customers through service delivery, through multiple channels, inter­actions and technological systems. Systemic design expands the context for design, engaging multiple organisations and stakeholders using systems methods, enabling service systems to be designed and defined across multiple levels and scales.

We view systems as highly interconnected, social and technological assemblages that function as a whole – not as delivery processes, but often con­ taining services that provide direct value.

Unlike services, systems have no single ‘owner,’ and client responsibilities may be ambiguous. Nobody owns the climate,

servi c e de si g n a nd sys t ems t hinking

Fig. 1: Systemic design extends service design to the system

traffic, or even the economy. Complex healthcare exceeds a hospital’s boundaries, and a whole system solution might account for several providers and transitions.

The Systemic Design Toolkit enable service and strategic designers to facilitate stakeholders in effective co-creation for complex systems. The Toolkit uniquely addresses complex system challenges: We provide tools that map whole systems, contexts, — human behaviours within systems, and that connect services within systems.

— Corporate service design requires tools that define relation­ships to systems, to identify risks and potentials from a service’s interaction in the relevant system.

Systemic design extends beyond ‘users’ to build — on knowledge and experience from inclusive contributions across many system stakeholders.

The tools help define sociotechnical systems that — contain many complex tasks (such as medical practices where specialised equipment, training

and informatics are tightly integrated). Common design tools are in­sufficient for the sustained, iterative development of expert knowledge required for large sociotechnical systems.

Our clients and organisations are facing ever-increasing complexity in their operations, technologies and service delivery. Organisations, services and business models become more entangled within their system contexts (e.g. a large healthcare provider). This entanglement is not revealed using ‘linear’ design methods. If we cannot engage these entangled policy and administration perspectives in service design, the potential for system change is certainly constrained. The Systemic Design Toolkit provides a portfolio of tools and perspectives for mapping and coordinating proposals across multiple social systems, supporting teams in engaging an expanded range of stakeholder as co-designers, to represent all service providers.

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Differences in service and system logic We deal with higher complexity now at every level of function. Organisations face higher complexity (connected­ness) in process and service management and must trust many platforms outside their control.

Boundary-crossing provider networks, cloud services and changing regulatory processes demand adaptability.

The services we design may be situated within in­ creasingly fragile systems, reinforced by invisible inter­ dependencies and hidden technologi­cal complexity.

Service-dominant logic, a key concept in service design, holds the customer as a co-producer of value realisation in service provision. Value is provided when the customer declares satisfaction, and there are true end points in a value chain. In systems logic, not only are the customer and provider participants in the offering of services and interactions, but they are also actively connected to other stakeholders necessary to form a containing process. Value is generated as an emergent result of multiple system interactions and feedbacks. We can plan and design for that value, but its realisation is a collective process over time.

If we employ user-centred design to enhance service experience within a complex system, we risk making the whole system less efficient. Consider a small-scale example, where we might improve the ‘wait room experience’ in a medical office but have no ability to reduce the wait times resulting from delays in the scheduling process and the hospital system. At a larger scale, life-risking delays in cancer surgery scheduling may occur due to scheduling priorities set at the policy level. In each case, if we cannot address the root cause issue, we can only improve the patient’s local experience.

Furthermore, by not challenging root causes, we perpetuate incentives to avoid the fundamental issue.

We often design services for client providers or their service delivery platforms, but systems have no single owner, and sometimes cross conflicting stakeholders. The methods, models and conversations that yield effective service proposals may not scale to complex systems.

They are not just differences of scale, but of types, of knowledge, model, actors and governance.

Since system-level decisions might have consequential impacts upon all the services in an underlying manage­ ment portfolio, design requires access to authority and participants across the system, beyond one service’s boundary. While service business models provide returns 32 Touchpoint 12-2

on value through revenue, systems such as global health, national healthcare or immigration policy must co-create shared value across numerous owners, crossing many actors, platforms, even governments.

Service design for policy platforms is often situated within existing infrastructures and sociotechnical systems (STS). STS are interconnected work processes where technologies are integrated to enable well-codified processes, such as medication delivery networks (in global health) or electronic health records (in national healthcare). Hospitals can be seen as a complex organisation of multi-scale STSs. Systemic design expands the service boundary When does a service project break into the system level?

A service is a well-bounded process, often contained within a larger system. A single healthcare provider’s service business model cannot change the system (e.g. payer or insurance system) that governs all health services. Service design can draw on systemic tools to build system models that propose arguments for more effective common features to serve stakeholders in both the service and a containing system.

All design methodologies can serve in defining this relationship between service and system value. We see the relationship between interaction, service and systemic design as portrayed in Figure 1 depicted by the function of each practice in relation to each other.

Interaction design is a deep, evidence-based practice necessary for defining user interactions, information use and the experiences that emerge in service touchpoints.

It is not a stage of design, but is carried through all service processes.

Service design, in general, develops comprehensive solutions for providers to co-create extraordinary service experiences, while hiding complex background interactions. Systemic design does not duplicate these or make methods redundant. Its specific purpose is to create system value, facilitated by stakeholder-driven design decisions, for policy and multi-organisation systems.

Several distinguishing features of systemic design are shown in Figure 1. These are system functions that match practices in the Toolkit, dealing with system definition (framing, modelling), stakeholder discovery in multiorganisational contexts, design intervention for system change, and system value propositions.

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Fig. 2: Systemic Design Toolkit methodology (systemicdesigntoolkit.org)

Fig. 3: Example Toolkit canvasses

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Fig. 4: Causal loop diagram

Fig. 5: Intervention strategy

The Systemic Design Toolkit Systemic design has developed for over ten years as a field without promoting any standard canon of methods.

The Systemic Design Toolkit is a platform of tools selected from consensus methods recognised by systemic design theory and practice. The Belgian design firm Namahn led the design of the Toolkit (following their successful Service Design Toolkit). The original tools were tested in workshops at the RSD5 Symposium (Toronto, 2016) by Namahn and design partner shiftN. Joining with Toronto’s MaRS Solutions Lab and the Systemic Design Association, a partnership was formed to launch and sustain the toolkit. Through education and client practice, the Toolkit has evolved into a systems methodology that explicitly connects services as interventions in complex systems.

The Toolkit is the only publicly available source of reference methods in systemic design, with support and training. Rather than representing a definitive methodology, we view the Toolkit as an evolving process model developed with a wide range of systems methods.

Through a seven-step methodology (See Figure 2), the Toolkit provides design-led teams a system for engaging stakeholders in framing and visioning, mapping trends and system dynamics, defining value and interventions, and planning transition strategy. The sketched-up maps are used as inputs to final form visuals, provided for use by clients and stakeholder teams for design planning, to co-create value across services and systems.

A systemic design methodology The seven steps integrate systems and design methods, alternating between a disposition toward systems thinking (top steps) and Design Thinking (bottom steps). The key methods associated with each step show the breadth and approach of the Toolkit: 1. Framing the System: Boundaries, context and actor/ stakeholder mapping 2. Listening to the System: Metaphors, design research 3. Understanding the System: System maps, feedback loops, synthesis mapping 4. Defining the Desired Future: Value proposition, foresight models 5. Exploring the Possibility Space: Intervention strategy, paradoxes 6. Designing the Intervention Model: Intervention, organisation 7. Fostering the Transition: Transition strategy

34 Touchpoint 12-2

While most Toolkit methods are informed directly by classic systems references, we have innovated several as practice experiments (e.g. metaphors and paradoxes).

The Toolkit approach is flexible. In our experience, no projects would use all the tools, and in workshops, steps can be arranged into staged sessions. Depending on the project stage, as well as the scope of design, time and knowledge availability, the tools may be adapted to engagements to facilitate design following a project’s defined stages. A design case describes the Toolkit’s application to a public sector challenge.

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Fig. 6: Case maps in Toolkit workshop

Systemic design in action Namahn completed a project encompassing all Toolkit steps with RIZIV, the Belgian national health program.

RIZIV desired to reduce the increasing number of women in poverty who avoid seeking healthcare during their pregnancy. In collaboration with other agencies, we started with a systemic design action plan to understand and coordinate a new system.

We were charged with finding the barriers that prevent these women from seeking healthcare during pregnancy. Due to the combination of multiple obstacles in the environment, multiple causes, a wide range of stakeholders and the need for policy design, systemic design was considered the best approach.

Early in the project, a framing workshop was held to involve experts and caregivers to build a shared understanding of the context and the underlying factors, using several tools in Step 1. We conducted experience interviews with eight women, to understand the experience of the system (Step 2), to develop a range of service user profiles. Rather than using systems language, we elicited and described metaphors participants used to describe their experience. For example, one woman understood the government health system as a black cloud, hiding the sun, where her midwife made it stop raining. Another considered the health system as frosted glass, due to its opaqueness and fragility.

To develop a framework and find interventions, in Step 3 we created a causal loop diagram (See Figure 4) that identified the reinforcing patterns, delays and system

leverage points. We also anonymised the women’s profiles into personas to incorporate their direct insights in a second workshop (See Figure 6) with an expanded multistakeholder group, resulting in a holistic action plan.

The project report revealed how these women lived in vulnerable situations with multiple problems (housing, domestic violence, etc.), making pregnancy an inferior concern. Following birth, they also distrusted the health system, fearing they might lose their children to an agency action. The co-designed action plan contributed to creating an integrated antenatal care process supported by the Belgium government. Several programs were launched to tackle this issue systemically.

Here we confirmed the systemic design methodology contributed extensive insight inaccessible from other practices, especially revealing unexpected connections and leverage points.

Future fusions We are improving the Toolkit with continuous develop­ ment and adaptation to feedback from practice and teaching. We are increasingly applying these methods in service design, and expect knowledge sharing from service designers to advance future practices for complex services and systems.

The Toolkit’s reach and accessibility will be further enhanced as the authors are completing a systemic design book, with an expected publication date of early 2022.

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Combining Service and Systemic Design in Norway’s Public Sector How StimuLab supports user-oriented experimentation and innovation Service design is currently dominated by a focus on the user journey, and therefore is not sufficient in itself for highly complex public challenges which cross agencies and sectors. To tackle complex public sector issues, the integration of systemic design capacity and a cross-disciplinary approach is crucial.

Benedicte Wildhagen is Senior Design Advisor at Design and Architecture Norway (DOGA), and Ellen Strålberg is Senior Adviser at Norwegian Digitalization Agency. They are both in charge of the collaborative running of the national StimuLab programme, which stimulates public innovation from the perspective of citizens. bw@doga.no ellen.stralberg@digdir.no Designers and consultants involved: Comte Bureau, PwC (LiveWork), Designit Oslo, Rambøll Management Consulting, Halogen, EGGS, Knowit, Deloitte, Agenda Kaupang, Menon Economics, Making Waves, PA Consulting Group, SopraSteria.

The Norwegian public sector has paid increasing attention to the use of service design to improve and renew public services. This has been particularly evident in projects such as Designit Oslo’s revolutionary remediation of waiting times for breast cancer diagnoses at Oslo University Hospital in 20131 . By reducing the waiting time from three months to five days, service design’s effectiveness was proven. The extraordinary result made the Norwegian Minister for Modernization determined to promote and support the further application of service design.

Wicked problems Even though there are now many success­ ful examples of service innovation in

1 https://www.designit.com/work/designing-outwaiting-times

36 Touchpoint 12-2

Norway, the government still faces many ‘wicked problems’ and cross-sector issues that remain tough to solve. These complex public challenges involve numerous stakeholders from different sectors, each responsible for providing specific parts of a comprehensive service. Addressing these challenges can lead to substantial socio-economic benefits, but frustratingly, they often get ignored due to several factors, such as responsibility, lack of financing, the absence of functional methods, co-ordination challenges, and so on. These complex challenges with multiple stakeholders in fact demand a systemic approach.

Service design is highly valuable when it comes to the user-oriented development of public services. However, in StimuLab, we experience that conventional service design is insufficient in tackling those ‘wicked problems’ mentioned previously.

servi c e de si g n a nd sys t ems t hinking

DIAGNOSE

EXPLORE AND ITERATE

UNPACK SILOS

VALIDATE, ORGANISE, PLAN

CO-ORDINATED DEVELOPMENT

REPACK INTO EACH SILO

ACROSS SILOS

KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER

DECISION STEERING COMMITTEE

Projects supported by StimuLab must commit to following the ‘Triple Diamond’. As this model from Halogen shows, iteration and adaptation are essential when meeting the needs of highly complex projects.

These kind of problems require a systemic perspective as well as a user perspective, and this is indeed what the publicly-funded programme StimuLab has gained experience in, over the past five years.

The Norwegian innovation lab for the public sector: StimuLab StimuLab is a learning platform for public innovation that supports and encourages user-oriented experi­ mentation and innovation, using design methodology.

With funding of ¤6 million from 2016-2020, it has at present supported 29 projects.

StimuLab was initiated by the Norwegian govern­ ment in 2016 and is run as a collaboration between Design and Architecture Norway (DOGA) and the Norwegian Digitalization Agency, which represents a unique co-operation.

From ‘Double’ to ‘Triple’ diamond At the core of StimuLab is service design. Building on the UK Design Council’s Double Diamond2, we added a third, and made the ‘Triple Diamond’ a mandatory framework for all StimuLab projects. The new diamond, the diagnose

2 https://www.designcouncil.org.uk/news-opinion/what-frameworkinnovation-design-councils-evolved-double-diamond

phase, emphasises how important it is to truly explore and understand root causes hidden in complex public issues. When faced with cross-sectorial challenges, it is crucial to create a shared understanding of problems and needs, at several levels, simultaneously – from users to services to systems and back – across sectors and by involving all stakeholders.

Out-of-house lab

Numerous countries have established in-house govern­ ment innovation labs to provide expertise and drive development. But because the Norwegian supplier market is highly-skilled, StimuLab strategically chose not to create an in-house lab, but instead to procure services from the market to develop and deliver solutions together with public organisations.

Tailored skill configuration Furthermore, each StimuLab project demands a tailored skill configuration from the market, for example, impact assessment, data analysis or behavioural psychology, to strengthen its capacity to deal with the domain at hand and to handle areas of complexity.

These matching skill configurations are not typically something that design consultants are able to deliver.

So, to meet these demands, they initiate formal Touchpoint 12-2 37

collaborations with e.g. management consultancies, who provide necessary, complementary expertise. As a result, StimuLab has been a catalyst for new co-operation and knowledge development to solve challenges that the Norwegian public sector has been unable to address so far. By offering increasingly complex projects to the market, StimuLab has also helped make the public sector an attractive client for a growing supplier market.

Charting low or high levels of complexity During the initial trial run back in 2016, the Ministry of Modernization demanded that StimuLab’s projects had to deliver results for genuine users by the end of 2017, much in-line with Designit Oslo’s breast cancer project.

However, it quickly became apparent that there were huge variations in StimuLab’s project properties, and we realised that project results and impact would vary in time, depending on how complex the challenges were.

StimuLab has chosen to support projects ranging from contained, single-owner services to complex multi-­stakeholder challenges. By using a simple chart to arrange projects, we can support dialogue, understanding and assessment of cross-disciplinary needs, relating to their location in the chart. It also creates a better under­ standing of project properties, ranging from low to high levels of regulatory and cross-sector entanglement and complexity, and what that entails when it comes to the Ministry’s initial anticipation of results.

n s

s

The breast cancer patients project, for example, would be placed in the bottom left quadrant. It involved a single stakeholder – Oslo University Hospital – and dealt with a contained challenge. The task was complicated, but it was possible to diagnose the problem, reorganise the service, test improvements and achieve results in less than six months.

High-level, complex challenges in the top right quadrant, however, require step-by-step development with multiple stakeholders. Improvements can result in significant socio-economic effects, but progress isn’t as rapid as in a contained service in the bottom left quadrant.

“Management of driving license conditions” is a complex project example, as it dealt with a service involving four government agencies as well as private sector stake­holders. The project began late in 2016 and was run by Halogen Design and Rambøll.

In Norway, professional truck-drivers, drivers over the age of 75 and people with various kinds of medical disorders must apply for a driving license every five years by submitting a health certificate from a doctor. The health requirements are set by the health authorities, but the road authorities are considered the regulatory administrator. The case flow between doctors and road authorities was paper-based, and drivers must personally show up at the Norwegian Public Roads Administration’s traffic stations with the requisite health certificate. In addition, the police need to see the health certificate’s

CROSS-SECTOR SYSTEM & SERVICE INNOVATION

Complex issues

14 6

9

Huge variations in project properties revealed itself

10 2

5

13

1

Single owner

Multiple part-owners

11 12 3

e 4

ystem

Contained issues SINGLE SERVICE INNOVATION

Charting low or high levels of complexity.

38 Touchpoint 12-2

7

8

2016-2017

2018

Office space efficiency

Sharing public knowledge

e-Transparancy

Debt Advice Service

National Archiving

Eco-friendly transport

Qualification of

system

Refugees

Families in crisis

Public air-quality data

Services for disabled,

Driving License Terms

Healthy diet

Human trafficking Family immigration

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Service design within the public sector is about solving complex processes to release innovation potential. In this project, “Management of driving license conditions”, Halogen and Rambøll Management Consultants helped the Norwegian Public Road Administration, the Norwegian Directorate of Health, the National Police Directorate and the Directorate of eHealth find better ways of determining a citizen's right to drive.

This is systemic designer Adrian Michalak-Paulsen at Halogen, detailing part of a giga-map.

conclusion, both to issue a driving license and to follow-­up on revocations.

This complexity lead to one of the most time-consuming services in the Norwegian public sector and several attempts to improve it were made during the last decade, without success.

The ‘diagnose’ phase made the many dependencies between medical, technical and legal assessments, which are entangled across sectors, visible and understood by all stakeholders. By working systemically with as much focus on the dependencies as on the user’s touchpoints in the service, the project weeded-out assumptions and managed to identify extensive innovation and develop­ ment potential.

Due to the high degree of complexity, the StimuLab project resulted in a roadmap and programme organi­ sation. This modification of a large and critical public service required a broad-based approach, synchronised across the organisations’ other activities. In-line with the roadmap, additional funding was secured and extensive improvements were implemented, and the significantly-revised service began to be introduced to the public in 2020.

Key learnings StimuLab experiences show that service design can generally solve contained projects with a single owner, whereas high-complexity, multiple stakeholder challenges, like the aforementioned project, require interdisciplinary expertise, in which the integration of systemic design3 capacity is vital.

The complex projects in the StimuLab portfolio demonstrate that an approach integrating systemic design capacity and interdisciplinary expertise quite rapidly manages to facilitate shared understanding of dependencies and entanglement among stakeholders from multiple sectors. Whether that’s understanding user needs, discovering the flexibility within the system, or finding paths for everyone to move beyond how government currently works today, it represents innovative, cross-sector collaboration.

3 https://www.systemsorienteddesign.net/

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Non-Linear Approaches to Service Design Existing approaches employed in service design are primarily anchored in establishing linear ‘cause and effect relationships’.

This article highlights the dangers of utilising linear thinking to address the complexities of service design and provides insights into how non-linear systems thinking could result in far more Suneet Kumar is the founder of Dignify Lab, a systems and service design firm. His work is focused on comprehending and designing complex systems with a keen focus on human dignity, which he has been applying to the domains of global banking and social development. suneetkr@dignifylab.com

40 Touchpoint 12-2

adaptive, meaningful and comprehensive services.

Linear approach to service design A ‘linear approach’ is the tendency to view phenomena in terms of simple cause and effect relationships. An example of this would be to inspect a faulty appliance and find the cause to be a loose wire. In this case, one just needs to reconnect the wire and the appliance will start functioning again. The linear approach works for machines, whose parts and the relationships amongst them are well-known. These are called simple systems. However, if we were to observe something like the declining performance of a large company, or even changing weather patterns, we wouldn’t be able easily identify a handful of causes, simply because there are too many variables.

Even if we were somehow able to identify all of the elements, we still wouldn’t be able to understand the situation in its entirety. The reason is that the way elements interact with one another is constantly changing and is, therefore,

non-linear in nature. Understandably, there is no loose wire to fix. These are called complex systems. Services are inherently intangible, with numerous variables that evolve with time. This is why they need to be understood as complex systems that require non-linear approaches for their design.

Non-linear approach to service design A ‘non-linear approach’ means employing systems thinking for designing services.

Given the complexity of the real world, as opposed to a laboratory setting, there is a very high degree of uncertainty involved. In order to design a service under these circumstances, we need to break free from the conventions of tools and templates that have served as staples in service design so far. This is where systems thinking comes in.

The central premise of systems thinking is that the whole is more than

servi c e de si g n a nd sys t ems t hinking

B2

R2

B1 R3

R1

Elements of the system Relationship between elements

R

Reinforcing feedback loops

B

Balancing feedback loops

The direction of the arrow corresponds to the direction of the loop

Fig. 1: An example of a system map consisting of elements and

Fig. 2: Systems dynamics at play, as illustrated by feedback loops:

their relationships

Reinforcing loops amplify phenomena while balancing loops suppress them

the sum of its parts1 . What this means for service design is that the entirety of a service cannot be described by its individual components alone. Rather, it is the interaction of these components that ultimately lead to the emergence of the systemic properties that define the service.

This approach is a radical departure and is characterised by its focus on networks of elements and relationships. For example, to design a new healthcare service, the entire network that is connected directly and indirectly with the healthcare system is studied.

This includes aspects of economy, policy, culture, human behaviour, politics and technology, among others. In contrast to the ‘persona-user journey-service blueprint’ approach, the systems approach ensures that the service is capable of dynamically responding to fluctuating external circumstances that govern its design and operation, making it flexible, adaptive and resilient.

Key concepts of the non-linear approach Systems thinking is a complex area of study in its own right and this article cannot cover every aspect of it.

We will, however, highlight key ideas from systems thinking that are central to designing services in a non-linear manner:

1 Capra, F., & Luisi, P. L. (2014). From the parts to the whole. In The systems view of life: a unifying vision (p. 66). Oxford, UK: Cambridge University Press.

System cartography: This is the act of creating systems

maps, which is different from creating mind maps. Unlike mind maps, systems maps are structured representations of research data synthesised to show relationships between elements of observed phenomena.

Systems dynamics: Because a systems map has clearly-

defined relationships between the elements, we are able to see various systemic behaviours emerge. For example, we can see how elements are connected to cause a service to either amplify or shrink over time.

There are certain principles used to do this which involve identifying patterns of systemic behaviours over time, and interpreting them to understand problems and make intervention decisions.

Deep ecology: Systems thinking consciously moves away

from the human-centric viewpoint towards one that encompasses all living organisms and the environment, irrespective of whether or not they serve human interests. This wide view is necessary to ensure that nonlinear relationships between seemingly isolated elements are discovered and accounted for in designing services that benefit humans, but not at the cost of endangering the larger ecosystem.

Synthesis-based approach: In analysis, the constituent

elements are broken apart to be understood individually.

Systems thinking, in contrast, synthesises all the Touchpoint 12-2 41

available data to create a larger picture that allows for hidden patterns of relationships to emerge.

Zooming in and out: A systems map has the ability to

provide a high-level overview as well as microscopic insights. Every systems map has a specific purpose, and depending on what it is, it may become necessary to provide either view. For example, to understand problems in a hospital, government and international policies can provide a zoomed-out view, while individual patient experiences can provide a zoomed-in view.

Case study: Linear versus non-linear approaches to service design In a project done for a healthcare service provider in Bangalore, India, it was observed that there were significant delays in filling prescriptions at its pharmacy unit. The process began with customers procuring numbered tokens and awaiting their turn. Once their number was called, they presented their prescription to the pharmacist, who would then collect the prescribed drugs from the inventory. The payment was done at the cash counter and the receipt presented at the collection counter, where they finally received the package.

If linear thinking is employed to fix the service delays, the research phase would involve observational studies and interviews with the pharmacy staff, customers and the supply chain personnel. The inquiry into the cause of delays would revolve around finding immediate causes of the problem. This would lead to minute analysis of the process through the mapping of various journeys, which could ultimately culminate into a service blueprint.

Process gaps would be identified, and every stage of the process would be examined to squeeze out efficiencies, the objective of enhancing the customer’s experience through reduced wait-time. New technologies and advanced methods of inventory management would be recommended, along with training programs for the pharmacy staff.

A non-linear approach, in contrast, begins with the creation of a systems map that breaks free from the immediate confines of the hospital to uncover non42 Touchpoint 12-2

apparent relationships between phenomena. In case of the pharmacy case described, one of the major contributors to the problem was not obvious because it lay within the policy domain. The Indian Medical Council (Professional Conduct, Etiquette and Ethics) Regulations, 2002 states that “Every physician should, as far as possible, prescribe drugs with generic names and he / she shall ensure that there is a rational prescription and use of drugs.”2 This guideline was not being followed at the hospital.

Doctors noted the specific brand name of the drugs on their prescriptions, which pharmacists were often unfamiliar with. When customers approached the pharmacists with their prescriptions, they first saw if that exact branded drug was in stock. If not, they checked the chemical composition on the inventory system and went searching for a replacement. They then approached the patient, asking them if they were fine with the alternative. Imagine if the average patient was prescribed four types of medications, and this process had to be repeated for even half of them. The delays would be enormous! Of course, this is not the only cause of the problem, but one that would be extremely difficult to find through linear thinking.

Understanding the problem is only half the story.

Solutions need to be designed to address them, and this is where systemic, non-linear thinking becomes absolutely crucial. In something as complex as a service, there are always unanticipated consequences to any intervention.

If we have a robust understanding of the system as opposed to only the process, we can drastically minimise these unforeseen repercussions.

For example, if doctors were asked to provide the generic names of the prescribed drugs instead of the brand names, they could then build their case for the named drug with valid arguments such as brand credibility and reliability. In addition, specifying the full generic formula is a time-consuming task, and would lead to fewer patient appointments, subsequently impacting revenue. Therefore,

2 Medical Council of India. (n.d.). Retrieved April 27, 2020, from https://www.mciindia.org/CMS/rules-regulations/code-of-medicalethics-regulations-2002

servi c e de si g n a nd sys t ems t hinking

systemic solutions have to be designed that respond to context instead of reacting to the immediate problem.

Service blueprint as a linear approach The service blueprint is the most widely-used method for designing services. Its merit is well-deserved, because it encompasses vital aspects of conceptualising new services as well as troubleshooting existing ones.

The fundamental basis for the blueprint is the process flow diagram, segre­gated into layers. Though several variations exist, an example of a typical service blueprint is shown in Figure 3.

The blueprint shows the amalgamation of two central aspects: experience and efficiency. The top-most layer depicts the customer journey with clearly demarcated touchpoints that dictate their experience. The subsequent layers show how the entire service is synchronised behind the scenes to achieve efficiency, while also delivering the desired experience for the customer. This is why a service

blueprint is excellent for prototyping services. Due to its being anchored in linear thinking, however, there are certain drawbacks that are associated with it.

The first concerns the usage of the blueprint as an analytical tool. When it comes to scrutinising services, its capabilities are limited because only those aspects that are present on the blueprint can be analysed. Services consist of several intermediate steps, often running in parallel between major ones. It is impossible to map all of these into the blueprint, and therefore there is no way to account for them in analysis.

The second drawback is that the linear format of the blueprint is constrained when it comes to representing higher orders of complexity. It is incredibly difficult to depict things like decision trees, which are inherently represented as networks, not linear flows. Even if they are included within a separate layer in the blueprint, it becomes virtually incomprehensible, and hence cannot be manipulated during the design stage.

Time

Customer journey

Line of interaction

Front stage actions Line of visibility

Back stage actions Line of internal interaction Support functions

Fig. 3: A typical service blueprint showing the process flow segregated into layers

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Time

Customer journey

Line of interaction

Front stage actions Line of visibility Back stage actions Line of internal interaction Support functions

Fig. 4: Limitations of the service blueprint as an analytical tool: Stages that are not depicted (shown as dotted boxes) cannot be accounted for during analysis

Time

Customer journey Line of interaction Front stage actions

Line of visibility

Back stage actions

Line of internal interaction Support functions

Fig. 5: Although information is segregated into layers, a service blueprint struggles to depict higher orders of complexities without becoming incomprehensible

44 Touchpoint 12-2

servi c e de si g n a nd sys t ems t hinking

Thirdly, service blueprints are rooted in shallow ecology, meaning that they have a human-centric worldview, putting everything else at the periphery.

Even though services are meant for human consumption, it does not make sense to possess such a near-sighted perspective to design one. Right from the onset, the focus is on customer experience, which could translate to a host of negative outcomes for everyone else.

The last drawback is the service blueprint’s inability to ground itself in the real world. Just as with laboratory conditions, all aspects around the service are assumed to be normal, which is never the case. This unresponsiveness to the ever-changing context can result in services that are either ineffective or possess very short lifespans.

Advantages of using the non-linear approach There are several advantages of using the non-linear approach, the most important amongst them is that it provides a much deeper understanding of the reality governing the design of the service. Things are always more complex than they seem to be on the surface, and using a systems lens, we can get a closer look at the system’s intricacies. This helps to uncover patterns and relationships between far-flung elements, thereby reducing blind spots that could have adversely impacted the design.

Another important role that systems thinking plays is in comprehending and leveraging emergent phenomena.

Because they are the result of non-linear interactions between various elements, emergent events cannot be predicted, and are only apparent in retrospect. Such phenomena occur all the time, but there is very little that can be done to address them. A systems map can, due to its networked structure, provide insights into the various dimensions of impact that such events can create, as well as provide adaptive solutions to effectively respond.

In addition, systems thinking can deal effectively with rapid changes in complexities over time. For example, if a change in fiscal policy occurs, it can be introduced as an element in the systems map, and the ripple of impacts can be deciphered across various domains. This is also the

reason why services that use systems thinking are very well-equipped for adapting to the future.

The final benefit concerns measuring and evaluating a service. It is true that there are existing indices and evaluation frameworks that aim to measure experience and efficiency. Some of these are survey-based, like Net Promoter Score (NPS)3, and some measure the processes themselves (like time and motion studies). However, the problem lies in the fact that these indicators are measured separately, and almost never provide a comprehensive evaluation of the service in its entirety. On the other hand, a systems approach can provide contextualised methods of evaluating various service indicators as a connected whole. NPS, for example, is a standard metric for measuring overall customer experience, while employee NPS (eNPS) measures employee satisfaction.

It is extremely difficult to correlate the two unless systems thinking is employed to identify the relationships between them. By doing so, customised evaluation metrics can be designed which can measure service production, delivery and consumption mechanisms in tandem, leading to highly-effective service indicators.

Conclusion As the world changes rapidly and becomes more complex with every passing second, there is a dire need to adopt a systemic, non-linear approach towards designing services. Simplicity is highly valued in design, but it cannot be achieved without a nuanced appreciation for complexity. We need to adopt perspectives and attitudinal shifts that view services not as inert and mechanical, but rather as living and breathing organisms that constantly evolve over time. Systems thinking can help make this possible and is therefore a very effective way to design services.

3 Reichheld, F. F. (2015, July 16). The One Number You Need to Grow.

Retrieved April 23, 2020, from https://hbr.org/2003/12/the-onenumber-you-need-to-grow

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Reframing the SocioEconomic Role of Design A new meaning and role for desirability, feasibility and viability Most service designers, when working with large organisations, have been confronted with the seemingly incomprehensible dynamics that come with complex systems. As service design matures, we get to see more and more of the ‘belly of the beast’, confronting us with a complexity and interconnectedness that is Sanne Pelgröm is senior service designer at Livework and leads the development of the agency’s long-term sustainability strategy.

Sanne’s career involved entrepreneurship, experience design, brand activation and innovation strategy. sanne@liveworkstudio.com

Erik Roscam Abbing is group director of innovation at Livework. He leads the development of Livework’s service innovation offer, especially focusing on sustainability. Erik is a frequent lecturer on Service Innovation and Design Thinking and the author of Brand Driven. erik@liveworkstudio.com

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challenging, but also very interesting to work on.

This is what originally attracted the Livework Sustainable Futures team to explore the intersection between systems thinking and service design as complementary approaches. But this article is not about the practical application of systems thinking in service design projects, or a theoretical exploration of the possible synergy between the two discourses. Rather, it’s an account of a group of engaged designers on a journey to re-scope their work and to embrace a more systemic view on the challenges we’re tackling.

It's a more personal story about how we, and many like us, are looking for ways to make meaningful impact.

One of the many inspiring ideas in systems thinking is that a system will organise around an overarching objective, a collective ‘purpose’, if you will. It will behave almost as if it has a will of its own. A system such as a neighbourhood

perhaps has ‘liveability’ and ‘wellbeing’ as purposes, while a system like a school class may have ‘identity development’ as its purpose.

These ‘purposes’ are mostly implicit as they drive the system's emergent behaviour; they’re not agreed upon or written down somewhere. But they will find a way to manifest themselves through self-organisation. Systems theory says that paradigms, or collective world-views about what is right and what is useful, will shape the way organisations behave in their chaotic reality. It’s the systems thinking translation of Peter Drucker’s aphorism: “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”.

Now let’s regard the service design community as a system and explore how this works here. Service design’s culture, in a generalised sense, is characterised by ‘serviceability’, the notion that economic and social value can be derived from ‘serving’ someone. In process, outcomes

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and attitude, the service designer is focussed on the needs of the other. “Value is determined by the beneficiary” is one of the powerful premises of the service-dominant logic that the service designer lives by. Serviceability has proven to be a valuable characteristic in re-animating and humanising an economy that has been dominated for decades by efficiency, value-extraction mindsets, growth-through-scalability and industrial logic.

But what does serviceability mean in times of tran­ sition, where the status quo needs to be challenged?

How can we extend our serviceability to larger chal­ lenges such as global well-being and our planetary ecosystem?

Our economy has been showing symptoms of systemic flaws for a long time already. But with Covid19 and the climate crisis, the pace and volume of these signals has increased dramatically. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see that a large socio-economic transformation is long overdue. Isn’t it only logical that service design, with all its good intentions, but still being firmly embedded in the socio-economic foundation that caused the crisis, needs to transition as well?

In the transition ahead of us we will have to somehow redefine what is valuable and how value can flow. We must learn how to enable systemic change and nudge systems in a direction where they contribute to the ‘purpose’ of the largest system of all: our planet and all beings living on it. We must learn to understand how to build local relationships that contribute to a global purpose and how to organise for an economy where old paradigms no longer apply.

This will be really hard, and we don’t have a solution in view. The scale and scope of these challenges exceed what we are familiar with. But that, you could argue, is not new to our profession. The more wicked the problem, the more it needs vision, imagination, collaboration, creativity, cross-disciplinary work, alignment of opposing interests, experimentation, optimism and pragmatism. And that is what service design, in its best manifestations, can deliver. That is, provided we are bold in our ambitions, yet humbly eager to collaborate and learn, for instance from systems thinking. But first, if we

want to reimagine service design’s influence and impact on the ground-breaking transformations we face, we must step up and reframe its role.

We’d like to share with you a model that we are working on, which attempts to reinterpret the role of service design as it relates to today's challenges and opportunities. It is a way for us to critically interrogate our own world-views on the role we may – or should – play in the aforementioned transformation.

The shift we made In order to determine where design should be heading, let’s look at where it came from. Tim Brown’s well-known conceptual model of ‘feasibility, desirability and viability’ has contributed greatly to the democratisation of design.

It has taught us to find the sweet spot where people, business and technology meet. It can now serve us well as a reflective tool. Let’s have a look.

The designer’s mission in any endeavour is to balance out Brown’s three core focal points. The way designers have interpreted these focal points provides a key under­ standing of the strategic shift design has gone through: 1. Desirability

Desirability was once understood as the extent to which an artefact met an individual’s desire to own it, and focused on transactional, short-term value exchange.

Desirability has since evolved into a characteristic which describes how humans appreciate integrated experiences, especially when these form the basis for the development of meaningful relationships and when they empower participants in the experiences to actively contribute to them.

2. Feasibility

Feasibility once described the extent to which an artefact could be manufactured by a factory, workshop or other production unit, using materials, technology and manu­facturing techniques. In the post-industrial age, feasibility has evolved to represent an understanding of an organisation’s ability to deliver value through the use of its resources and capabilities.

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s p o n s o re d c o n t e n t

3. Viability Viability

Desirability

Relational

Indirect financial

Individual

Direct financial

Production cell Organisation

Feasibility

We see Tim Brown’s model for the sweet spot between desirability, feasibility and viability is evolving. Moving outwards, his image depicts the first step in the evolution which has taken place over the past decennia.

Viability

Desirability

Collective

Long term triple bottom line

Relational

Concurrent to the societal move from a product economy to a service economy, service design developed the capacity to design for relationships, long-term value, the intangible and the holistic. From there, service design went on to focus on the organisation as a platform for integrated value creation, and how design can be used to reimagine organisations.

But throughout this evolution towards increasing maturity, the over-arching socio-economic paradigm has remained the same: individual consumer needs are served by individual companies in a competitive market.

This is the economic paradigm that brought us far, but which must now evolve to a new state and even towards a new systemic purpose.

The shift we need to make Using Brown’s model again, we can set an agenda for the shift we think we need to make as designers on a mission:

Indirect financial

Individual

Direct financial

Production cell Organisation Consortium

Feasibility

This image depicts the second step in the evolution of Tim Brown’s model, which we currently see taking place in our daily practice.

48 Touchpoint 12-2

Viability once defined the extent to which an artefact could generate revenue and profit for a business. As value itself became more complex and relational, viability got redefined to imply integrated, long-term strategic business value (including more complex metrics such as Customer Lifetime Value or Net Promoter Score).

1. Desirability

Desirability’s next stage is that we must stop thinking of what’s desirable in terms of the individual alone.

Designing solely for individual needs overlooks the needs of society, which leads to the infamous ‘tragedy of the commons’: the failure of placing individual resource use above a resource’s value to society as a whole.

We have to learn to understand what is desirable for humans, citizens and consumers, as a collective. Climate change is a great case in point. If we would solely design for what’s desirable for the individual, there is no way we can make a dent in global greenhouse gas emissions.

Individually, we will continue to want our cars and holiday flights and cheap mail order clothes. So, if we

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want to have impact, we have to redefine what desirable means beyond what individuals want.

2. Feasibility

For feasibility, we envision a similar reframing: We must move our thinking of what is feasible beyond the system boundaries of the individual organisation. The challenges we face cannot be solved by individual entities in competition with each other. Instead, we will have to learn to design for collaboration, and the (public/private) consortium will be the new unit of production. Using the same climate change example, and more specifically the energy transition: the transition from carbon-based energy to natural resources such as sun and wind, requires parties like manufacturers, energy companies, network companies and consumers to closely collaborate to become a success.

3. Viability

Viability also faces a similar evolution. It’s no longer solely business value that we must design for. Rather, our role must transform to look beyond money as a metric, to include long-term economic, social and environmental impact in how we frame viability. In the case of the example of the energy transition, this would include environmental ‘costs’ such as the amount of carbon released per kilowatt, in the total end consumer price for that kilowatt. But it soon gets more complex, for example if we are to consider the aesthetic price we pay for more windmills in our landscape and include that in the unit price for energy.

Accelerating by leaping

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

Buckminster Fuller

Rather than stopping there and imagining this next level of Brown’s model as our new perspective for the years to come, we took Buckminster Fuller's advice and zoomed out a little further, reimagining design’s role a bit more radically.

Let's envision an ideal state so compelling that it could create a gravitational pull. What would desirability, feasibility and viability mean if we would radically re­f rame them, leaving behind all preconceptions of our current economic context?

1. Desirability

We would consider desirability as going beyond human needs, taking into account the needs of all participants in our planet's naturally-balanced ecosystem. By doing so, the web of interdependencies would be respected while attempting to introduce interventions that would induce positive change on a systemic level. And this positive change will have to be so appealing that it overrides any detractors at the organisational or individual level. In the case of the energy transition, the potential gains in clean air and a stable climate will have to be made so appealing and tangible that individuals and organisations will forego their short term gains and instead, will collectively – and systemically- strive for these ‘higher’ gains.

2. Viability

In a similar, more radical reframing, viability would look beyond competition and individual survival. It would not only include reducing impact while maximising revenue, but would also aim to build systemic resilience based on mutual generosity. In good times this would create innovative synergy, while in times of hardship it would allow for collective resilience. Again, in the case of the energy transition, this may imply that people share the energy they generated individually with a larger collective, because they know that they will benefit from the same sharing system later.

3. Feasibility

Feasibility would be non-proprietary and distributed in open networks of collaboration. These would be based Touchpoint 12-2 49

s p o n s o re d c o n t e n t

Viability

Desirability

Generously resilient

Planetary Collective

Long term triple bottom line

Relational

Indirect financial

Individual

Direct financial

Production cell Organisation Consortium Open distributed

Feasibility

This image depicts the third step in the evolution of Tim Brown’s model, which we see taking place in our daily practice now.

on trust and protected against exploitation. The hard distinctions between producer and consumer would soften, while power differences would level-out to a more equitable balance. This may be hard to imagine, because our economy has evolved so far away from it. On the other hand, just imagine how co-operatives of farmers work, or how neighbours help each other out voluntarily with chores (“I’ll mow my elder neighbour’s lawn”) or lending each other assets (“Of course you can borrow my drill”) or commodities (“Do you have a cup of sugar for me, I’ll bring you a piece of the pie I’m baking?”).

Then, take this collaborative, voluntary sharing model to the energy transition, and imagine how a network of individuals, assisted by organisations, may both produce and consume renewable energy without anyone having power over another, or making profit at the expense of another.

Idealistic? Sure. But it is happening right now. One example is in Wolfhagen, Germany, where local com­ mu­n ities have set up (hybrid) co-operative models of producing, distributing and consuming energy1 . We think this may just be the future, knocking at our door.

Viability

Desirability

Generously resilient

Planetary Collective

Long term triple bottom line

Relational

Indirect financial

Individual

Direct financial

Production cell Organisation Consortium Open distributed

Feasibility

The four nested levels, from the individual interaction to the wider systemic perspective.

Nested levels The model now gives us four levels of perspective: in the inner circle it focuses on individual interactions, and as it moves outward it takes on a wider, systemic perspective.

In the application of this model, we find it important to acknowledge that each level is equally relevant and should be considered simultaneously: Collective desirability can only be obtained if individual desirability is secured as well.

A generously resilient viability approach is built upon both healthy financials as well as the overcoming of organisational challenges, and these are essential for consortia to succeed.

The model encourages the designer to think at four different levels of abstraction concurrently, to connect

1 https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/01/this-small-germantown-took-back-the-power-and-went-fully-renewable/

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the macro to the micro, the abstract to the concrete and the visionary to the realistic. This is not easy, but it is important if we want to change the system we’re a part of. But as the complexity of the challenge at hand increases, and perspectives widen, the roles for us as service designers also shift. We see many possible consequences for our practice. The most important ones might be as follows.

Complexity as a given

Complexity is not something to tackle and get rid of, it is there as a fact of life, and we must learn to work with it, not against it. More than ever, we need to be able to ‘surf complexity’ through developing systems literacy and agency. We need to adapt our ways-of-working and how we educate future service designers to the evergrowing complexity of the challenges we are – and will be – facing.

This systemic ambition and the modelling of our new role is work in progress, and we’d appreciate your feedback. If you feel compelled by our line of thinking, please reach out. If you feel we’re biting off more than we can chew, or see things the wrong way, please also reach out. We are looking for ways to accelerate our learning and the hive mind of the service design community is invaluable for this.

Move beyond the project

We must explore new models of engagement with clients that allow the following: 1. The collaboration of a wide and diverse range of stakeholders 2. The patience to work on long-term impact and slow change (while still have room for fast-paced sprints) 3. The initiation of explorations and experiments without clear briefs and pre-set outcomes 4. The venturing into unknown territories to create proofs-of-concept, for example through (participation in) start-ups Radical collaboration

We must proactively seek and facilitate the meeting of minds and we must accommodate and derive inspiration from opposing viewpoints. In our work we will have to take an active role in bringing together professionals from different backgrounds, such as technologists, complex adaptive systems experts, ecologists, sociologists, change managers, progressive governing experts and others.

And we will have to take an active role in facilitating the creative interactions between these expert viewpoints.

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Shifting Paradigms A compass for designing in complexity

As a design community, we have developed certain paradigms over the past decades which have provided us with guidance in our daily work. In an increasingly complex world, we are now challenged to reconsider all of them, and adapt a more holistic perspective.

Fabian Gampp is a strategic designer, lecturer and systemic design expert, with a focus on social and ecological innovation. He is co-founder of the education innovation lab and the systemic design group (www.systemicdesign.group), supporting corporates, NGOs and public sector organisations in driving sustainable systems innovation. fabian@systemicdesign.group

If you wake up in the morning and look out of the window and see a rainy sky, you might see an opportunity for a cozy day with a good book, whereas someone else might perceive it as a limitation of their daily outdoor activities. How we see the world is determined by many factors: the education we received, the experiences we had, the circumstances we grew up in, the paradigms our parents followed, as well as others. In the language of systems thinking, this lens through which we see the world is called our ‘worldview’1 .

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This worldview influences our opinions, decisions and actions.

If we transfer this idea of a worldview to the design practice of the last decade, it would be a pretty narrow one, because the dominant, underlying paradigm that influenced us most was the humancentered perspective.

1 Goodman, Michael, Systems Thinking as a language, [Online] Retrieved April 30, 2020, from https:// thesystemsthinker.com/systems-thinking-as-alanguage

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We are constantly circling around user and stake­ holder groups, taking them as anchor points for the development of product and service solutions. We aim to reduce complexity, create more convenient experiences, and deliver ease of use in order to reach higher engagement rates for our clients. This humancentric paradigm has been a tremendous success story for our practice, and it is one of the reasons that design has evolved from the margins of aesthetics and product design to a point where it now plays a central, strategic role within many companies.

At the same time, we find ourselves in a world that is highly connected, and due to digitalisation, more complex than ever. As a species, we have come to accept that our current lifestyle increasingly destroys ecosystems, the habitats of millions of animals, and with that the life of future generations. Facing intertwined challenges such as climate change, migration, populism and the extinction of countless species, the question arises: Whether or not a narrow focus on human-centeredness is still appropriate for the decades to come. Or, how Jesse Weaver boldly stated in his article Design Won’t Save the World2 , “Human-centered design is great for mops and phones, but (in its current conventional state) it won’t solve society's biggest problems.”

To better cope with complexity and wicked problems, emerging fields such as systemic design, which combines approaches from systems thinking and design, start to bring a broader perspective into our practice. The focus shifts from serving humans only, to pursuing a more holistic approach, in order to change entire systems.

2 Weaver, Jesse, (1.8.2018), Design Won’t Save the World, [Online] Retrieved April 30, 2020, from https://medium.com/@ hairyelefante/design-is-not-going-to-save-the world-8985870471a5 3 Meadows, Donella, (2015), Thinking in Systems, Chelsea Green Publishing Co 4 The Australian Prevention Partnership Centre, (2018), Systems practices you can do every day, [Online] Retrieved April 30, 2020, from https://preventioncentre.org.au/resources/learn-about-systems 5 GK VanPatter, (2020), Rethinking Design Thinking: Making Sense of the Future That has Already Arrived, Humantific Publishing

But if we step back from human centricity, which paradigms and which overall worldview could guide us in the future? Because systems thinking, with its academic origin, can be difficult to access, the following principles inspired by literature3,4,5 , expert interviews and our own systemic practice, are an attempt to make it more approachable. These principles can serve as a compass to better navigate complex challenges, in the emerging field of system-driven design innovation.

Seven principles for designing in complexity

1. Create space for multiple perspectives and collaboration

A system cannot be fully understood from only one viewpoint. Working in complexity means engaging with several actors within the given system, and taking their experience, opinions and perspectives into account. Start conversations and create a space for interdisciplinary collaboration. In the end, the actors are the only ones who are capable of driving change within the system.

2. Zoom in and out between the human and system perspectives

When working in complexity you must go beyond the focus on human needs and behaviours. Step out of the human perspective to see the whole, and get a feeling for the bigger picture. Design with empathy for humans.

But more importantly, remember to focus on the positive development of the system they reside in.

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3. Visualise complexity to uncover hidden patterns, relationships and dynamics

Working in complexity means uncovering meaningful connections, relationships, feedback loops, causes and effects between the parts of a system. A key approach to understanding systems and their dynamics is the translation of complexity into visual artifacts and system maps. This allows one to untangle dynamics, create a common understanding between actors, and lay the groundwork for creating emergent system interventions.

6. Be humble, strive for emergence and system health

Be humble. There is no silver bullet solution when it comes to complex challenges. Always seek to understand the emergence of things and the interplay between various factors which together might drive the system in a positive direction. System interventions have to be context-sensitive and ideally, they build on existing dynamics. It's not about benefitting single actors; it’s about creating a system that is healthier overall.

4. Consider long-term behaviours and effects

Shift from a short-term to a long-term perspective in everything you create. Look beyond the ‘quick win’ and consider the consequences of your design on users, stakeholders and the environment over time. Be aware that many effects may occur with delays and in unexpected places within the system. Try to keep track of these consequences during the creative process, because the responsibility you hold as a designer does not come to an end when implementation begins.

5. Become a systems storyteller

Working in complexity easily can become overwhelming.

To be able to communicate findings and insights gathered from collaborative sense-making, it is important to create tangible narratives and pictures that everyone can empathise with. This enables the actors involved to create a common understanding and to further engage with the system at hand in the long run.

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7. Constantly challenge your worldview

If you truly want to engage in systems innovation, you have to be aware of your own worldviews, and how your thinking drives your actions. Our work affects peoples’ behaviours, as well as natural resources, animal habitats and the balance of entire ecosystems. Constantly reflect on your practice, challenge your assumptions and standpoints, and be aware of the responsibility that comes with being a systemic designer.

We can play an important role in shaping the future.

We can do this by reflecting as individuals, and as a community, on the realities we construct, and by starting to explore the underlying dynamics and relationships in systems. This enables informed decision-making, and with that can come more sustainable system inter­ ventions. This is a valuable journey to embark on, yet one in which we know we will never entirely understand the complexity which surrounds us.

servi c e de si g n a nd sys t ems t hinking

For more information regarding

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The official SDN Community workspace on Slack offers a community platform for service designers around the globe, with direct community interaction, discussion and knowledge sharing.

Our Slack workspace is open and free to both members of the SDN and the wider service design community. Upon joining, you’ll be able to choose to participate in a range of channels which match your interests: •

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Touchpoint 12-2 55

Designing Resilient and Adaptive Services Lessons from improvement and implementation science for service design As service design continues to develop, work from other disciplines may help provide ways to broaden our practice and provide increased value for our stakeholders, both internal and external. This article looks at two emergent disciplines – improvement science and implementation science – to see how Manuhuia Barcham, PhD is Managing Director at Archetekt, a strategic design and futuring firm based in Seattle, USA. He has over twenty years’ experience working across Asia-Pacific and North America for a wide range of clients, including the UN, the Australian Federal Government and Snap Inc. manuhuia@archetekt.com

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to integrate aspects of these disciplines within our existing service design practice. In doing so, the aim is to both build out our own capabilities as designers, as well as to provide increased value for all by creating more adaptive and resilient service systems.

Organisations as systems Service design is necessarily systemsfocused. This is because the organisations within which we work are systems that are themselves embedded within broader social, economic and cultural systems.

However, despite our best intentions as service designers, and the necessarily systems-focused basis of service design, the majority of our work tends to focus on projects that are closely-defined in scope and which give little opportunity to engage with the broader systemic spaces in which our design activities occur. While this may be part of how organisations typically engage us for work, it does not mean that we cannot promote and undertake more systems-

focused aspects of our work in our various engagements.

As just one example, a common limit­ ing factor in the long-term success of our work with clients is the ability for our projects to be successfully implemented within the context of the organisation as a whole. That is, while the project outcomes that emerged from our design work may function well for the client in terms of the specific parameters of the agreed-upon design brief, in the longer term, other systemic factors either inside the client’s organisation (or external to it) may negate or even reverse the positive outcomes of our work.

While there is no way to entirely prevent this from occurring, there are

servi c e de si g n a nd sys t ems t hinking

ways to minimise the chance. Additionally, this challenge is directly linked to the nature of all organisations – both public and private sector – which necessarily operate as systems. What this means is that if we are to truly maximise the value we provide to our clients, we need to address this fact that organisations operate as systems.

Two important bodies of knowledge which could help us do this are implementation science and improvement science. These can help us to understand how to ensure our service design offerings are more closely and sustainably linked into the broader organisational systems in which they are applied.

Implementation science and improvement science In short, implementation science refers to work to promote the systemic and systematic uptake of evidencebased interventions into practice and policy within an organisational setting.1 Improvement science, on the other hand, refers to systems-level work that uses cycles of inquiry to learn about what is required to improve practices within an organisation.2 Implementation science focuses on the mechanisms – both internal and external to the organisation – required to ensure successful implementation of a desired change. This has meant there has been a strong focus on the assessment of how these change mechanisms differ according to, and across, various organisational contexts. In its development as a practice, there has always been a strong focus on implementation success; that is, of actually making a change in an organisation.

However, actual outcome measures focused on issues such as improved levels or quality of service have generally received less focus. However, more recently, implementation science has increasingly recognised that service outcomes are distinct from implementation

1 Proctor, E., B. Powell and J. McMillen (2013). "Implementation strategies: recommendations for specifying and reporting."

Implementation Science 8(1): 139.

2 Bryk, A. S., et.al (2015). Learning to improve : how America's schools can get better at getting better. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard Education Press.

Improvement and implementation science offer some interesting and valuable ways to modify and extend our service design practice to create more value for our clients.

outcomes, and one does not necessarily lead to the other.

In other words, just because you implement a program successfully in different environments does not mean that you will get the same results in those different environments.

Similarly, improvement science has been based on the development of interventions through a combination of organisational leadership and on-the-ground engage­ ment. It does so while using rapid and iterative PlanDo-Study-Act (PDSA) cycles, which are informed by the ongoing measurement of data from the actions and behaviours emerging from these interventions. A PDSA cycle – a key aspect of improvement science – is a method for testing a change through planning it, trying it, observing the results and then acting on what is learned.

This iterative and ongoing process of improvement is why the concept of continuous improvement underlies all improvement science work. Historically, though, the outcomes of interest for improvement science in these interventions have been changes in indicators of process improvement, such as more children being immunised, increased levels of school attendance and so on. Typically, in process improvement, less time is spent on under­ standing why or how a specific intervention worked.

In many respects, implementation and improvement science seem like natural partners because they each address an explicit deficit in the approach of the other.

These complementary aspects include how to maximise

3 Koczwara, B., et.al (2018). "Harnessing the Synergy Between Improvement Science and Implementation Science in Cancer: A Call to Action." Journal of Oncology Practice 14(6): 335.

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Service design

Implementation science

Improvement science

Organisations as systems

Focus is on the aspects of the system that impact the specific service being developed, with less focus being placed on broader aspects of the system within which the service being designed will be embedded.

Focus is on the ways in which the system as a whole needs to change in order to optimise the implementation of new programmes and processes.

Focus is on the ways in which current well-functioning aspects of system processes can be successfully scaled-up while simultaneously reducing existing poorly performing processes.

Data

Use of data which is collected through the design research process and early iterations of service offerings, with this focus reducing as the design process nears completion.

Multi-level use of data related to various organisational factors (particularly process fidelity) and stakeholder input to drive problem solving and decision making across the system as a whole to bring about change.

Staged and on-going use of data to understand which measures are working and which are not, so that decisions can be made about how resources ought to be allocated to maximise success of the various processes in focus.

Teaming

The co-design processes necessarily entail working with a broad range of stakeholders, but generally a strong level of focus remains on the service design team rather than on other codesign stakeholders.

Linked implementation teams use data to identify needs, develop theories of action and follow iterative cycles of implementation that prioritise implementers’ voices in planning and problem solving.

Data is used to identify needs, develop theories of action and follow progressive cycles of improvement that prioritise participants’ voices in planning and problem solving. This is often done through the use of teams working across an organisation, where they are referred to as “network improvement communities”.

Table 1: Comparison of service design, implementation science and improvement science

the effectiveness of bringing about positive organisational change (via implementation science), while also ensuring that these learnings are able to be successfully scaled-up and applied in a range of different organisational contexts and types (via improvement science). And so, while each approach has developed separately, their common focus on system-levels change has recently begun to see practitioners come together to explore how the improvement and implementation sciences can be successfully brought together to maximise the positive outcomes from combining these two approaches.3 This then brings us back to the issue of service design and the nature of systems-level work, and how im­provement and implementation science may be able to offer us ideas and applications to improve our own practice.

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Implementation science, improvement science and service design When we look at the three disciplines, we can see some obvious connections and differences across them.

All three disciplines share a similar general focus on modifications to service delivery including understanding: the context of the service setting; the functioning of the organisation or system itself; the various stakeholders involved; the process under examination; and the various service outcome enhancements for users that their work will entail.

Another key similarity across all three approaches is their use of some form of prototyping as they iterate through the different processes that underpin their respective work. A major difference between these approaches is that in contrast to much service design work, improvement

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science and implementation science have a broader focus on the organisational system as a whole.

It is important to note however that both implemen­ tation science and improvement science often assume that the right intervention is already in existence, and it just needs to be tweaked. Implementation science and improvement science also tend to spend a lot less time on understanding needs and framing problems, and instead focus sooner on intervention selection or improvement, compared to service design.

The question to be asked then is: “How can service designers incorporate various elements of improvement science and implementation science into their practice to provide increased value to their clients?” In our experience, there are two main ways this can be done.

As a first step, we have focused specifically on expanding the set-up process around the collection and analysis of data in our design processes, beyond just the research phase of typical service design work. The goal here – building in particular on the techniques developed in improvement science – is to help ensure that by continuing to collect, analyse and utilise data, the client is able to continue to adapt and change the designed service as required in light of changes in the broader system.

To this end there is much to be gained by aligning our new data collection and analysis systems with preexisting data collection and monitoring processes in the client organisation. This both reduces additional costs from doubling-up on processes, as well as provides a more concrete connection between the new service and the broader organisational system. As a result of these shifts, a key aspect of our service blueprinting now includes ensuring a clear understanding of what data will emerge at each step of the service process, as well as creating an understanding of how that links up with other data gathering and analysis processes in the organisation.

Secondly, we more intentionally work with clients to create spaces for on-going teaming, beyond even our own involvement in the service design process. While there has always been a strong co-design aspect to our practice, we have increasingly tried to create spaces for our clients to bring together teams to participate more fully in our work with – and for – them. This relates to the increased focus on data collection we have introduced in our practice, because it ensures that there is a group who can actively monitor and analyse the data as it emerges to ensure that the service, as originally designed,

adapts to changing needs. The key here is ensuring, as implementation science helps demonstrate, that you not only have leadership buy-in to these teaming processes, but ideally have some leadership representation within the teams themselves.

All together, we have found that these changes have helped create a greater resiliency in the services we have designed for our clients, because they provide a number of mechanisms for the services to be adapted and changed as the organisational system within which they are embedded itself changes. These practice shifts have helped create a space where our service offerings are more closely linked into the broader organisational systems in which they operate, which we have found has improved their long-term effectiveness and hence the value we can provide to our clients.

Conclusion In sum, improvement and implementation science offer some interesting and valuable ways to modify and extend our service design practice to create more value for our clients. The extension of our practice to include a broader use of data – including specifically linking that data to other data monitoring efforts already occuring in the client’s organisation – and a stronger focus on teaming, can help ensure a better fit between the service offerings we design in our work and the broader system within which these service operate. By integrating improvement and implementation science with existing service design practices, we are able as a discipline and as practitioners to build out our own capabilities, and provide increased value for all by creating more adaptive and resilient service systems.

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Navigating the Complexity of Service Systems Service design practice through a systems thinking approach Service designers often need to navigate complex ecosystems of services in order to understand the interactions amongst actors and to understand how value is being co-created. The advancement of emerging technologies has introduced additional complexity to the existing service systems which are foundational Cecilia Lee is a design practitioner and researcher working in emerging tech.

She is currently a final year PhD in Service Design at the Royal College of Art, London, UK.

to the connected service economy. This increasingly complex situation requires service designers to be able to see the big picture whilst focusing on granular details of interactions among key actors at micro-, meso-, and macro-levels of service systems.

Doing so allows them to understand the problem at hand through a holistic lens and identify the potential solution that could enable the value co-creation process among actors across all levels of service systems.

The growing complexity of connected service systems also demands a deeper understanding of how actors within those systems interact with one another to co-create value and sustain the system.

Therefore, a systems thinking approach has been gaining increased traction in the service design community.

Systems thinking emerged from the concept of systems in the biology discipline, which was further developed into the so-called ‘general system theory’

by Ludwig von Bertalanffy in the 1950s.

His motivation for the development of this

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theory was to introduce the systems ideas that can be applicable to any discipline.

Although systems thinking has its roots in systems theory, it is focused on the process or the application of the concept of systems, rather than the theory itself.

Given the transdisciplinary nature of systems theory, both systems thinking and systems theory have influenced a wide range of disciplines from design to engineering, service management, marketing, ecology and the natural sciences, to name a few. Despite the existence of divergent approaches to

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adopting systems thinking, the essential characteristics of the systems thinking process – structure, interaction and value co-creation – are universally manifest in any contexts in which systems thinking is applied.

In his recent publication, Richard Buchanan defines a system as “a relationship of parts that work together in an organised manner to accomplish a common purpose”.

Similarly, service researchers Paul Maglio and Jim Spohrer define a service system as a “configuration of people, technologies, organisations and shared information that is able to create and deliver value to providers, users and other interested entities through service”.

Although recent criticisms of systems thinking describe it as being a reductionist approach that overlooks many important contextual factors of systems, such as social and environmental ones , service designers can still benefit from its holistic process to understand

from the outset the potential implications of their design solutions. But because the essence of systems thinking lies in generalisation, it may remain too abstract for practitioners to apply it in their design practice.

As a design practitioner and a design researcher, I have used a number of systems thinking frameworks introduced by the academic community in my design practice and found them useful. Although there are still many design frameworks that are not easily applied in practice, I would like to share two which I have successfully used. The frameworks originate in services marketing and system engineering respectively, and I hope that they inspire readers to apply them to their own challenges. The original frameworks are complex, and I describe them here concisely. If you would like to go deep into these frameworks, I encourage you to visit the original papers cited alongside.

1. Service Ecosystem Framework (adopted from Akaka, Vargo and Lusch (2012))

Macro-level

Public health policy Example: Healthcare service

Meso-level

Micro-level

Community well-being

Patient experience Macro-level components: e.g. institutions, state, society, culture Meso-level components: e.g. organisations, community Micro-level components: e.g. interactions between actors in a system

Discipline of origin

What is it about?

When and how could it be used?

Service marketing

The Service Ecosystem Framework is introduced and widely used by the community of scholars from Vargo and Lusch (2004)’s service-dominant logic.

This framework emphasises inter- and intra-linkage of value co-creation process across each level of the service ecosystem. It represents a high-level view of how value co-creation takes place in a service ecosystem and contributes to the viability of the ecosystem.

As shown by an example in healthcare, service designers can use the Service Ecosystem Framework to understand interrelationships between different layers of the ecosystem, especially during the early stage of design process.

By doing so, they will be able to build a holistic view of where value co-creation and value co-destruction interactions between actors are taking place in an ecosystem and develop design interventions accordingly.

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2. Soft Systems Methodology (adopted from Checkland and Poulter, 2010)

Real world

Transformation

A perceived real world problematic situation

Reflection-in-action

Step 1: Explore problematical situation by analysing three elements: 1) Beneficiary, 2) Social, and 3) Politics Step 4: Implement solution identified in Step 3 in order to bring about a change and improve a problematic situation

Systems thinking world

Step 2: Build the collection of intellectual prompts which represent different world-views and use it to structure discussion and debate.

Step 3: Discuss and debate to find reconciliation between different worldviews and explore the solution that may improve a problematic situation

Discipline of origin

What is it about?

When and how could it be used?

Systems engineering

Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) identifies the lack of ability in the systems engineering approach to address the complexity exhibited in multiple interaction between different elements in systems.

Human affairs are too complex to be condensed into a single-unit system. SSM acknowledges that each individual holds an idiosyncratic worldview which is often shaped over time through personal values, beliefs and life experiences; therefore, the purpose of SSM is to take a human-centred lens to explore wicked problems in the real world, and use different worldviews as the collection of intellection prompts to structure discussion and debates. A structured discussion and debate then helps people involved in a given system to find reconciliation between different views and land on the solution that is both desirable and cultural feasible for key actors in the system.

The building blocks of the SSM process can be explained by four steps illustrated in the diagram adjacent. SSM is particularly useful for a multidisciplinary team in which individuals with different specialisms collaborate with one another to work towards a shared goal.

The solution is then implemented in order to bring about a change and turn a problematic situation into one resembling a preferred future. The core tenet of SSM process reflects how designers work,

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Let us take a look at how the SSM process can be applied to the same healthcare example described previously.

Step 1: Explore problematic situation based on three elements: a) Beneficiary, b) Social, and c) Politics a) Beneficiary: Citizens b) Social: The more a population is vaccinated, the less likely it is that the country requires a lockdown for virus containment. As a result, the country can minimise further economic damage.

Also, people can freely socialise with one another without restrictions which will help bring life back to normal quickly.

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which is demonstrated by the fact that it shares many similarities with design principles and practices, such as ‘reflection-in-action’ (Schon, 1995) and ‘speculative design’ (Dunne and Raby, 2014).

c) Politics: the country can mitigate the burden from healthcare cost for those who are hospitalised and prevent further economic losses due to a lockdown.

Step 2: The distinctive feature of SSM is its appreciation of the idiosyncratic worldview held by each individual. One person could view the Covid-19 vaccine as a potential solution to the further spread of virus and allow for fast economic recovery, whereas someone else could view the same vaccine as unsafe drug that has been developed with enormous time pressure and without significant clinical trials. In order to reconcile between many different worldviews presented by key actors of the system, these actors will need to turn their different views into the collection of intellectual prompts which they can use to structure discussion and debate.

Step 3: Based on the outcome of Step 2, the key actors explore the potential solution that could address the problematic situation. At this stage, they can develop a problem statement such as “How might we encourage more people to get vaccinated in a timely manner?” It is imperative to ensure the solution identified is both desirable and culturally feasible.

Step 4: Implement the solution identified in Step 3 and monitor its performance and conduct reflection-in-action to repeat Steps 1-4 again, once a new problematic situation arises.

While it may not seem easy to adopt these approaches in your own design process, once you understand their core concepts, you can easily adopt them and even tweak them to generate more robust insights.

References 1 Akaka, A. M., Vargo, S.L., and Lusch, R.F. (2012). An exploration of networks in value cocreation: a service ecosystems view. Vargo, S.L. and Lusch, R.F. (Ed.). Special Issue – Toward a better understanding of the role of value in markets and marketing (Review of Marketing Research, 9, p.13-50), Emerald Group Publishing: Bingley, United Kingdom.

2 Buchanan, R. (2019). Systems thinking and design thinking: the search for principles in the world we are making. She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation, 5(2), 85-104.

3 Checkland, P. (1999). Systems thinking. (Eds). Currie, W. and Galliers, B. (1999). Rethinking management information systems: an interdisciplinary perspective. New York: Oxford University Press.

4 Checkland, P. and Poulter, J. (2010). Soft systems methodology. In Reynolds, M. and Holwell, S. (Ed.). Systems approaches to managing change: A practical guide. London, UK: Springer.

5 Dunne, A. and F., Raby. (2014). Speculative everything: Design, fiction and social dreaming. The MIT Press: Cambridge, USA. 6 Lee, A. (2016). Resilience by Design. Switzerland: Springer.

7 Maglio, P.P. and Spohrer, J. (2008). Fundamentals of Service Science.

Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 36, 18-20.

8 Schon, D. (1995). The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action. Aldershot: Leuven, Belgium: Leuven University Process.

9 Vargo, S. L. and Lush, R.F. (2004). Evolving to a new dominant logic for Marketing. Journal of Marketing, 68, 1-17.

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Using Systems Thinking to Design a Patient-Centred Cancer Care Service A journey map is a useful and widely-applied tool in service design that implicitly assumes the journey to be linear in structure. However, some episodes of a journey may repeat, forming loops, such as patients receiving treatments that must be administered several times. In such healthcare Jiun-Yu Yu is an assistant professor at College of Management and D-School at National Taiwan University. Dr Yu teaches Design Thinking and system dynamics and applies them to conduct research in healthcare service design and innovation, such as cancer care, patient-controlled analgesia, emergency medical service and tele-health. jyyu@ntu.edu.tw

journey loops, a patient’s status, including physical conditions, emotions, expectations and knowledge, change over time, generating dynamically complex pain points. Systems thinking is an inspiring and capable approach to analyse these dynamic complex loop structures. This article attempts to apply a systems thinking approach within service design practice to make unique contributions for cancer patients.

Many modern cancer treatments must be administered several times, such as radiation therapy and chemotherapy.

Because these repeated treatments produce physical and psychosocial side effects that require ongoing care, cancer involving repeated treatments should be reconceptualised and managed as a chronic disease (Stanton et al., 2015)1 .

As a result, cancer care for patients experiencing repeated treatments should be prolonged into long-term survivorship, in which learning from medical professionals and interactions with other cancer patients are potentially beneficial.

Patients with head-and-neck cancer

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(HNC) have high survival rates. Because the repeated cancer treatments may gradually harm their abilities to breathe, eat, drink, swallow or talk, they are encouraged to take rehabilitation exercises as early as the treatments begin.

However, most patients fail to comply.

Medical professionals approached me to see how to improve compliance and to help patients recover. After conducting field-observations, in-depth interviews and text-mining analyses, the patients’ unmet informational and psychosocial needs behind the poor compliance were identified. We then applied systems thinking to develop a causal feedback-

servi c e de si g n a nd sys t ems t hinking

Actual physical condition

Desired physical condition

Discrepancy

Perceived physical condition

Actions: compliance, treatment completion, rehabilitation

Knowledge, concepts, and decision rules Fig. 1: The cancer patient journey as double-loop learning

loop model to explain the behavioural structure of HNC patients. Our model suggests that these unmet needs can be satisfied by systems thinking-based service design.

The cancer patient journey as double-loop learning When patients receive a diagnosis of cancer, they are suddenly faced with a life-changing event. A large gap opens up between their ‘actual’ physical condition (the real world) of having cancer and their ‘perceived’ physical condition (their mental model of the real world), generating strong emotional waves of shock and denial.

Our studies revealed that this emotional period may last for months.

The discrepancy between ‘actual’ and ‘perceived’ states drives patients to learn about their cancer, to make decisions, and to take actions to restore their physical condition to a ‘desired’ state. This learning process is in fact a double-loop structure, because the patient’s goal (desired state) and mental model (perceived state) are not static; they are influenced by the information learned during treatment. Such influence is illustrated by the two green dashed lines in Figure 1. The learned information (knowledge, concepts) will enlarge the range of decision rules and actions the patients can take to improve their ‘actual’ physical condition. This double-loop learning

structure provides a prototype to reframe the cancer patient journey from a systems thinking perspective.

Facing the system structure in Figure 1, a systems thinking approach then asks how to make it more comprehensive and how to improve its performance.

Firstly, what kinds of information are needed and how do patients seek that information? Secondly, what discrepancy drives the information-seeking behaviour?

Lastly, how can the learning process be made more efficient and effective by creating new links and loops?

Information-seeking behaviour and information needs of HNC patients

Our analysis showed that HNC patients seek information from medical professionals, other HNC patients and caregivers, as well as the internet. Although they use the internet as their main information source, they do not really trust what they see online. Instead, they place more faith in the experiences of others who have survived HNC, as well as caregivers. That information is primarily gained through personal interactions.

We also found that the required information is rarely provided in sufficient detail or in a timely manner, or via a well-designed channel by medical professionals, leading patients to rely on support groups and online communities.

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Actual physical condition

Desired physical condition

Perceived physical condition

Discrepancy

HMW1

Level of satisfaction with autonomy and competence

A

Level of satisfaction with relatedness

HMW2

Actions: compliance, treatment completion, rehabilitation

Seek informational and psychosocial support from medical professionals

Seek informational and psychosocial support from other patients

B1

Willingness to share with other patients

Knowledge, concepts, and decision rules

Informational and psychological support from medical professionals

B2

Informational and psychological support from other patients C

Fig. 2: Behaviour causal structure behind pain points

Pain points, psychosocial needs, and selfdetermination theory

We described HNC patients’ pain points from the perspective of psychosocial needs. The three basic psychosocial needs of ‘autonomy’, ‘competency’ and ‘relatedness’ in self-determination theory (SDT) provide useful reference models to explain the observed patient behaviours, which allowed us to develop a causal structure driving those behaviours, as shown in the central part of Figure 2.

Behaviour causal structure behind pain points The ‘actual’, ‘desired’, and ‘perceived physical conditions’ are at the top of the diagram. Collectively, they create 66 Touchpoint 12-2

‘discrepancy’, reducing a patient’s satisfaction levels in terms of the three basic psychological needs described above: autonomy (A), competence (C), and relatedness (R).

For simplicity, the first two needs (A&C) are combined in Figure 2. Reduced satisfaction levels in A&C and R drive patients to seek information and psychosocial support, both from medical professionals and from other patients. The dotted grey arrow from ‘Satisfaction Level of Relatedness’ to ‘Seek Information and Psychosocial Support from Medical Professionals’ reflects the fact that the link is quite weak in the current practice.

‘Knowledge, Concepts, and Decision Rules’ are influenced by the responses from medical professionals and from other patients. The short double bar on the

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arrow denotes the situation in which support from medical professionals is often delayed. Because patients have become more knowledgeable about their cancer and the decision options they may have, their ‘desired’ and ‘perceived physical condition’ improve, and they are more likely to consistently take actions such as complying with doctors’ instructions, completing the entire treatment and undergoing rehabilitation exercises in this learning loop of repeated treatments, thereby improving their ‘actual physical condition’. Because their ‘actual’, ‘desired’ and ‘perceived’ conditions all improve, the discrepancy amongst them gradually decreases, leading to the end of the repeated treatment phase.

Additional insights Our systems thinking-based analysis revealed three additional insights. Firstly, an improved satisfaction level of relatedness increases the satisfaction level of autonomy and competence. This effect – shown by the the thick red arrow ‘A’ in Figure 2 – is a first challenge when developing a point-of-view (POV) in service design.

Secondly, when cancer patients receive support from patients similar to themselves, they tend to be more willing to share their experiences. This reinforcing dynamic (shown by the thick red arrows B1 and B2 in Figure 2) generates a new loop to smoothe and facilitate the learning process.

Thirdly, although the medical professionals interviewed are frequently too busy to provide timely information and psychosocial support to their patients, they are still very concerned about the quality of support that their patients receive from other patients. They recognise and appreciate the benefits and potential of cancer support groups, but they have no idea how to facilitate such groups to operate effectively and efficiently.

The thick red arrow C at the bottom of Figure 2 illustrates this concern and opportunity.

Conclusion and discussion Based on the insights from our findings, we developed a set of ‘point-of-views (POVs)’ and a series of ‘how-mightwe (HMW)’ questions to serve as design guidelines for innovative service design in the cancer care context.

One of the POVs is that newly-diagnosed and desperately-shocked patients need psychosocial support because they imagine that their relationships with family and friends will never be the same. The systems thinking approach guides us to create two options to increase the ‘satisfaction level of relatedness’: Lowering the level of ‘discrepancy’ (orange arrow HMW1 in Figure 2) or increasing the level of ‘support from other patients’ (arrow HMW2). These two options give rise to various additional HMW questions, such as, “How might we connect new patients and their carers in a timely and comforting way to patients who have survived, or are further along in their cancer journey?”

Using Figure 2, it is possible to systematically examine each POV for different care phases (diagnosis, treatment and survivorship) and for different patient needs, and then brainstorm possible HMW questions. Creating insightful new links and loops in a behavioural structure is one the unique possibilities offered by systems thinking.

Such new links represent great potential for service designers to explore.

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Tools and Methods

Implementing Policy through Systemic Design This article shows how a systemic design approach was used to support the implementation of a policy direction that touches multiple services and organisations. It discusses how a team of designers and policy makers mobilised services to action through breaking silos, building empathy and developing Nourhan Hegazy is a Design Lead at the Treasury Board Secretariat of Canada (TBS) where she builds capacity for systemic design. Nourhan holds a Masters of Design in Strategic Foresight and Innovation from OCAD University and a Bachelor of Science in Product Design from the German University in Cairo.

Kara Waites is an Analyst at the Treasury Board Secretariat of Canada (TBS). As part of the Design Team, Kara enjoys making connections and building communities. Kara holds a Masters in Public Administration from Queen’s University, and a Bachelor of Arts in Media and the Public Interest from Western University.

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a community of practice.

Connecting policy with service As society evolves, new approaches are being adopted by governments to meet people’s needs. In 2018, the Canadian federal government introduced a “Policy Direction to Modernize Sex and Gender Information Practices” that aims to promote the respect, inclusion and personal safety of transgender, non-binary and two-spirit people. This policy direction acts as a framework to align federal public services on inclusive practices and asks them to rethink how and why they collect and display sex and gender information.

The policy direction was developed over the course of two years in collaboration with many organisations, gender-diverse communities and various other stakeholders. It impacts IT systems, business processes and regulations, but most importantly, it is about ensuring that policies and services are inclusive of all gender identities. It introduces a third

gender identifier, ‘X’, when sex and/or gender information is displayed.

While some people may simply check the “M” or the “F” when asked about their sex or gender, for many gender-diverse individuals, that is not the case. According to a study by Trans PULSE1 , trans people face issues with identity documents that don’t reflect their lived gender, in addition to being more vulnerable to discrimination and marginalisation (Bauer G. R. & Scheim A. I., 2014).

Sex and gender information is used by the government for many reasons, such as for analysing demographics, delivering benefits and issuing identity documents such as passports. Therefore, implementation is multi-faceted; there are impacts on many service touchpoints such as forms, correspondence, web

1 Trans PULSE is a research study of social determi­nants of health among trans (transgender, transitioned) people in the province of Ontario, Canada.

tools and me thods

content and identification. Aligning services through the policy direction aimed to ensure a consistent and inclusive experience to minimise service disruptions and systemic biases.

Our small team of designers and policy-makers was given a time-limited mandate to incubate this policy’s implementation across 75+ organisations. We knew that a different approach was needed to mobilise teams to action, given this issue’s complexity. We needed an approach that could both build empathy with genderdiverse communities, as well as break silos between stakeholders to achieve holistic and practical outcomes.

Our team developed many tools and supports to socialise the issue and enable implementation for all organisations. However, we also recognised a need to build service design capacity for key organisations and services that have the most volume and impact on people. The following case study will focus on how we mobilised key services to action through a series of systemic design workshops.

Mobilising key services through life course themes

We began by looking at the federal government service ecosystem to understand which services have the

biggest volume and impact. Key services that make up the majority of client touchpoints with the federal government were identified. A series of systemic design workshops brought these services together under ‘life course’ themes, such as joining the military, immi­g rat­ ing and retiring.

This made it possible to consider the end-to-end journey of an individual as they move through mul­ tiple services across the federal continuum. Rather than addressing services in silos, life course themes ensured that services consider how they impact people collectively. It allowed stakeholders to see how sex and gender data is shared between stakeholders and is in a constant state of flux with people’s evolving gender identity.

To recruit key public service stakeholders, we connected with departmental representatives who had participated in the policy development stage. This was useful, given these contacts had knowledge of the policy, its drivers and its complexity to implement.

They provided support to identify diverse stakeholders to join our workshop. Within nine months, workshops mobilised over 20 departments, 40 services, 100 public servants and 30 executive leaders.

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Brainstorming ideas on napkins supported more divergent thinking

Shifting mindsets through storytelling and sense-making Over the course of two days, workshop participants engaged in deep and meaningful dialogues, as well as mapped challenges and opportunities for policy implementation. Workshop capacity was limited to 14 public servants to ensure intimate and effective conversations. At the end of the second day, teams pitched ideas to a leadership panel. Below are some of the methods used by our team to guide public servants through a systemic design process.

Sharing stories together

Engaging in dialogue with gender-diverse communities was key to understanding how the policy impacts people and why building inclusive services is so important. This was a transformational part of the workshop because for many participants in the room, it was their first time hearing first-hand experiences from trans, non-binary, two-spirt and gender-fluid individuals. To create a safe and welcoming environment, facilitators met with ‘Inclusive Dialogue’ guests prior to the workshop to answer questions and consider any needs they may have.

Seating was arranged in a circle and guests were given the floor to share their story, before opening the dialogue 72 Touchpoint 12-2

for questions. We tried our best to include more than one guest in our dialogue to share different perspectives, as well as to avoid putting the spotlight on an individual.

The session was hosted after a lunch break where participants and dialogue guests had a chance to meet informally over a meal.

Before the ‘Inclusive Dialogue’, we had a chance to hear from participants where they see challenges, opportunities and interdependencies for implemen­tation.

Giving participants the chance to share their frustrations before the ‘Inclusive Dialogue’ was key to ensuring participants felt heard and were ready to listen to guests with an open mind.

Visualising what we heard

Mapping exercises were introduced to support participants in making sense of what they learned from stories shared throughout the day. A hybrid of design and systems thinking tools were used to map both client needs, as well as interdependencies. For example, personas and journey maps helped to identify client painpoints, while influence maps helped to identify key actors in the system and how they influence one another. By the end of the first day, participants had a chance to vote on the key challenges that were the most crucial to focus on.

tools and me thods

Letting go of the expert hat

Three key challenges were identified, and inter­ disciplinary teams were formed. Participants were encouraged to let go of their ‘expert hats’ by joining a challenge they were less familiar with. A series of brainstorming exercises were introduced to encourage divergence and play, such as using analogies, drawing on napkins and referring to cards with idea prompts.

The workshops concluded with participants pitching ideas to a leadership panel. The opportunity to present to a leadership panel was important, because participants had a chance to hear feedback directly on what they need to consider as they move forward with implementation.

Leaders also had a chance to be exposed to this approach and their participation gave legitimacy to the workshops.

References: 1 Government of Canada (2018) Modernizing the Government of Canada's Sex and Gender Information Practices: summary report. retrieved from: https://www.canada.ca/en/treasury-boardsecretariat/corporate/reports/summary-modernizing-info-sexgender.html#h-1 2 Bauer G. R. & Scheim A. I. (2014) Transgender People in Ontario, Canada: Statistics from the Trans PULSE Project to Inform Human Rights Policy. Retrieved from: https://transpulseproject.ca/wpcontent/uploads/2015/06/Trans-PULSE-Statistics-Relevant-forHuman-Rights-Policy-June-2015.pdf 3 Lave J. & Wenger E. (1991) Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge University Press.

Fostering a community of practice After the workshop, participants expressed a desire to connect with other workshop participants. They were very curious about other workshops and what challenges other services were facing. Our gender-diverse guests were also eager to stay involved in the work and learn about the progress departments were making. Therefore, we launched a community of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991)2 to continue connecting people and sustain implementation.

A toolkit that shares methods and findings from our nine workshops is in development and aims to empower participants to become ambassadors of the policy direction in their own organisations. Our hope is that this becomes a self-sustaining, dedicated community that continues to implement the policy direction long after our team ceases to exist.

2 Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger describe a community of practice as a group of people who have a shared practice and engage regularly to advance it.

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Natalie Kuhn (she/her) Meet the service designer

Along with fellow service design pioneers in the New York City area, Natalie Kuhn helped establish the SDN New York Chapter.

In the years since, her team and chapter have been recognised with awards for their chapter activities, and she has been involved with the global SDN's efforts around Diversity, Equity Natalie Kuhn is a Senior Manager of Service Design within the Capital One Commercial Bank and co-founder of both the SDN New York Chapter and SDN DEI Task Force.

and Inclusion, as part of a taskforce established in 2020. She also manages to find time for her day job: Managing service design at US banking giant Capital One. Here, she chats with Touchpoint Editor-in-Chief Jesse Grimes about her roles and ambitions.

Jesse Grimes: You've been at the forefront of a group of volunteers who have fostered and built the service design community in New York City, first independently and then as a chapter of the SDN. Who does that community consist of now, and how do you characterise the practice of service design in the city?

Natalie Kuhn: Our community consists of folks who range from being interested in understanding what service design is to practicing professionals within the field. Up until the pandemic we catered to those within the New York City area, extending into New Jersey, but now we are honoured to welcome anyone within an EST-friendly time zone. Based on conversations within our events, the community is most interested in the 74 Touchpoint 12-2

tangible application of service design as well as topics such as diversity, equity, inclusion, ethics and social good. They seem to enjoy digging into the plethora of contexts in which service design can be applied, as well as being given some time to practice methods and interact with one another. One of both my most stressful, and laughable, moments last year was when our 90-person Zoom group faced a technical issue with breakout rooms, but was unwilling to turn off their cameras to try to remedy the issue. They stubbornly wanted to maintain connection, and that was wonderful. To me that is the community in a nutshell – people who want to get into the weeds of service design while connecting on a very human level.

Outside of events, the service design industry within New York City is

p ro f i l e

somewhere between its nascency and adolescent years: There are service design jobs out there and people generally know what it is, but I would not say it is in as high demand as other design disciplines, or is being practiced at scale. Organisations continue to be much more familiar with research, user experience design, visual design and content strategy if I had to compare a few.

Local communities are a key part of making people feel at home in a global organisation such as the SDN, and your chapter has earned several awards from the SDN which recognise your success in running events.

What do you think others can learn from yourselves in terms of building a local community, attracting both newcomers and skilled professionals, and engaging them with relevant content? I'm sure other chapters out there are keen to know!

Almost three years ago, the SDN New York Chapter, previously known as the NYC Service Design Collective, was born from a genuine interest to connect individuals who found themselves intrigued by or – better yet, highly passionate about – the field of service design. My two friends, Kathleen Chao and Antonio Cesare Iadarola, and I were seeking a place to go to exchange ideas, best practices, and general knowledge as it related to the

space. Unfortunately, we came up empty-handed when it came to an ongoing, consistent and interactive platform.

Sure, there were service design events here and there, but we wanted something to participate in regularly that would allow us to build deeper relationships with other service design enthusiasts to support one another’s learning and growth. In a way, we built the community for ourselves knowing that there were other folks out there who were probably looking for something similar.

We started by hosting an initial discovery event along with disseminating a survey to bolster our hypothesis with real data. Since then, the community has remained aligned to the mindset and approach that anyone is welcomed, we discuss the space of service design with some tangential topics woven in, we make sessions as interactive as manageable, and meet regularly, on a monthly cadence.

My advice to others would be to create something that you yourself would want to be a part of and go from there.

Each one of our events is something myself, Kathleen, or Antonio would personally want to attend, and, from what we have experienced, others have wanted to attend as well. We try to weave in a mix of formats from panels, talks, discussions, workshops, and service safaris as well as feature both known leaders as well as up and coming folks to share the spotlight. Consistency has helped us to foster on-going relationships, as well as offer ample opportunity for new joiners to engage. Each month we are excited to see both familiar and new faces.

In your professional life, you're a Senior Manager of Service Design at Capital One. Can you share with readers how you've gotten there, and what challenges keep you busy there? Capital One has been really at the fore­front of recognising the value of service design and integrating it into the way it operates, from the earliest days of service design recognition in the United States. What does this mature level of practice look like on the inside?

Over the years my career has evolved quite a bit. I began working for a start-up in the Central Coast of California, and now find myself on the opposite side of the US Touchpoint 12-2 75

working for a financial services organisation. Over the years it has not been just my geographical location that has slowly shifted, but my fundamental role within an organisation. I started out creating site maps, wireframes, conducting usability tests and running marketing campaigns for highly nuanced product offerings, and now I leverage systems thinking across various lines of business, complex processes and several tech platforms to influence our business strategy and priorities. None of this happened overnight or was, in any sense, planned.

I simply followed what was most interesting to me.

I worked for agencies for several years, between the start-up and Capital One, which gave me the sense that I wanted to work in-house to get closer to the problems I was seeing from a consultancy lens. I hoped, and was mostly correct, that going in-house would position me not only closer to the problems, but closer to having the ability to influence and create change to eradicate them altogether.

At Capital One, I work on initiatives that take into consideration various product strategies, market trends, organisational structures, business priorities, communication patterns and training programs, as well as designing for both employee and customer experiences.

Each day is different, and I am never bored. There is plenty to do and I find myself very busy as a service designer managing a small team of individuals working across groups. Methods I use often include empathy interviews; synthesis through diagrams, experience maps, service blueprints and insights; co-creation sessions; various ideation frameworks; evolution planning; prototyping; and product, or service, testing. My projects typically last anywhere between five months and two years.

You've also somehow found spare time to work with the global SDN organisation to help guide its Diversity & Inclusion efforts from a handful of lenses. Can you share your and the team's ambitions here, and what changes our wider community can expect to see in the future?

The Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Task Force – which consists of Max Masure (they/them), Kendall 76 Touchpoint 12-2

Griffin (she/her), and myself – aspires at our best to help the Service Design Network lead by example from a DEI lens: To influence businesses and other organisations to take steps they have taken themselves toward positive evolution and real change. We have a long way to go to get there. On the more near-term side of our aims, we are looking into ways to raise awareness, launch education campaigns, evaluate the SDN and its programmes as they are today, set specific goals, and take targeted action to breathe DEI into SDN structures, offerings, chapters, processes and events. The SDN leadership team has recently approved a financial inclusion initiative proposed by the DEI Task Force that will be launched over the coming months. More announcements will follow. We want to approach this space with intentionality, real commitment and follow-through, all while working in close alignment with SDN leadership and the organisational mission. As we get started, we recommend those interested in making change within their own communities look toward these groups currently paving the way: Design Justice Principles, Where Are The Black Designers, Equity Design Collaborative, Equity by Design, Dismantling Racism and Tech Can Do Better.

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The SDN Launches New Financially-Inclusive Programme Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) can only genuinely come to life when they permeate all systems within an organisation.

The Service Design Network is committed to DEI and has been working diligently over the last year to map out efforts that ensure it stands at the forefront of all we do today and what we envision for tomorrow. As part of the promise we made to the community earlier last year, we have created a DEI Task Force consisting of Natalie Kuhn (she/her) (Senior Service Designer, Capital One), Max Masure (they/ them) (author and Ethical UX Researcher), and Kendall Griffin (she/her) (SDN Team Leader), to help us develop standards and criteria for achieving racial, gender and social justice within the practice of service design. Our goal is to take a critical look at our own organisation first, before reaching outward to ensure our mission is led by example.

In working closely with the DEI Task Force, we have recognised that one of the most profound ways our organisation can demonstrate its commitment to fundamental transformation is to launch new policies around our fee structures.

We are moving away from a ‘one-

size-fits-all’ pricing approach for our Professional Membership profile (initially), toward something much more embracing, to ensure that we make ourselves more accessible to the diverse community of global service design professionals, and no longer restrict their participation due to disproportionate cost for membership.

Income Annual

Spring 2021 kick-off for Professional membership In rolling out our new financial inclusion program – set to launch in early Q3 2021 – we will initially adjust the SDN Professional Member­ship profile. These member­ ship fees will now vary according to the geographical location of the individual instead of our former flat fee of 180 Euros. Using the World Bank’s country income index as a guiding framework, membership fees will fall into one of several geographical economic categories: low-income, lower-middle income, upper-middle income and highincome.

While a significant portion of our funding comes from membership fees, we nevertheless feel compelled to ensure we offer service design practitioners across the globe a means to connect to the community.

It is only by bringing together a truly global collection of minds, insights and perspectives that our network can live up to its vision for itself: An inclusive and welcoming space for all.

Categories

Membership Fees

High-income

180 Euros

Upper middle-income 120 Euros Lower middle-income 60 Euros Low-income

40 Euros

And this is only the beginning!

Written by Kendall Griffin, Natalie Kuhn, Max Masure, SDN DEI Task Force.

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Service Design Award 2020: Finalists Selected The Service Design Award, curated by the Service Design Network, is the first international service design award to recognise the service design community’s achievements in both the public and private sectors.

PROJECT / LOCATION

CX transformation for hearing care/ USA The Service Design Award, curated by the Service Design Network, is the first international service design award to recognise the service design community's achievements in both the public and private sectors.

Participants of our 2020 award process, who have patiently awaited updates that have been delayed due to the global pandemic's challenges, must wait no longer!

The SDN is incredibly pleased to announce that Service Design Award 2020 finalists have been selected by our international jury of service design experts. Ten projects, which represent the global benchmark for world-class service design, have been shortlisted in the three categories of Professional Commercial, Professional Non-profit/Public Sector, and Student. Because of their exceptional work and project contributions, we are taking our industry to new levels!

Special thanks to the 2020 Jury: Kerry Bodine, Taina Mäkijärvi, Kate Okrasinski, Luis Alt, Damian Kernahan, J. Margus Klaar and Florian Vollmer.

COMPANY

Smart Design CLIENT

Amplifon CATEGORY

Professional Commercial

PROJECT / LOCATION

Future of facilitation: Digital blueprinting on a global scale / Australia COMPANY

Xero CLIENT

In-house project CATEGORY

Professional Commercial

78 Touchpoint 12-2

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PROJECT / LOCATION

PROJECT / LOCATION

PROJECT / LOCATION

Alleviating stress and frustration during medicine switches / The Netherlands

Immigration and Asylum Appeals / UK COMPANY

Transforming workers' compensation service experiences: Moving from fax to future-proofed services / Canada

COMPANY

Engine

COMPANY

Koos Service Design

CLIENT

CLIENT

BENU (pharmacy chain) and VGZ (health insurance company)

Immigration and Asylum Reform Project, Her Majesty's Courts and Tribunals Service

Workplace Safety and Insurance Board

CATEGORY

CATEGORY

CATEGORY

Professional Commercial

Professional Non-Profit / Public Sector

Professional Non-Profit / Public Sector

PROJECT / LOCATION

PROJECT / LOCATION

PROJECT / LOCATION

Working with children check for Indigenous applicants / Australia

Inclusive Digital Services for the Municipality / The Netherlands

COMPANY

COMPANY

Design in a crisis: Rescuing the pay experience for federal government employees / Canada

Today

Koos Service Design

COMPANY

CLIENT

CLIENT

PwC

Office of the Children's Guardian

CLIENT

CATEGORY

Amsterdam municipal government (Gemeente Amsterdam)

Professional Non-Profit / Public Sector

CATEGORY

Shared Service Canada, Government of Canada

Professional Non-Profit / Public Sector

CATEGORY

CLIENT

In-house project

Professional Non-Profit / Public Sector Touchpoint 12-2 79

Congratulations to all of our finalists!

We look forward to celebrating their work during Virtual SDGC21. We encourage you to take a look at their excellent projects! The complete list of shortlisted projects and finalist case studies is available at https:// www.service-design-network.org/ service-design-award-finalists PROJECT / LOCATION

Escuela sin Fronteras / Chile TEAM

Catalina Hepp UNIVERSITY

Design School of Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile CATEGORY

Student

PROJECT / LOCATION

Low touch: The future of dining out / Ireland TEAM

Marie Salova UNIVERSITY

National College of Art & Design, Ireland CATEGORY

Student

80 Touchpoint 12-2

Written by Sonja Jazic, Project Manager for the Service Design Awards at the SDN HQ, Germany.

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Available on Medium!

To spread knowledge, insights and awareness of service design to the wider world we're now making selected articles from each new issue of Touchpoint available on Medium. We are proud that SDN got recognised by the platform as a top writer in ‘Innovation’!

Have a look! www.medium.com/touchpoint www.medium.com/@SDNetwork

Touchpoint 12-2 81

Going Glocal Meetups: A Knowledge Exchange for SDN Members The world is a rapidly-evolving landscape. Organisational complexity is growing, user expectations are intensifying and the digital landscape's on-going evolution finds service designers squarely faced with the challenges and opportunities that come with the next wave of change.

At the Service Design Network, we are committed to ensuring that you stay informed about the trending topics shaping our practice's future and remain connected to the critical voices that are innovating, impacting and elevating its standing on the global stage. Nevertheless, these unprecedented times call for new ways of thinking and acting, which lead us to reach out to our chapters to help brainstorm opportunities to best support our member community’s power and purpose.

This co-creative process resulted in some exciting developments!

As a result, the SDN is pleased to announce the launch of the ‘Going Glocal Meetup’ series, an online platform that fosters the sharing of ideas, data, experiences and expertise for the benefit of practitioners worldwide and the advancement of that knowledge to their local communities, exclusively for paid members of the SDN.

82 Touchpoint 12-2

The Future of Service Design The Going Glocal Meetup will be hosted throughout the year, from three different regions: The Americas, EMEA (Europe, the Middle-East and Africa), and the Asia-Pacific region). The kick-off features a total of three events cohosted by two regional SDN chapters.

The theme for our upcoming meetups will focus on the ‘Future of Service Design’ study undertaken

by SDN President Birgit Mager, with participation from the global community. Generated as a follow-up to her 2020 summit of the same name, this joint venture is the endresult of conversations had with many pioneers and industry experts who openly shared their knowledge.

Focussed around the emerging issues and opportunities for our evermaturing practice, the meetup series will be a platform for many inspiring and lively discussions around what lies ahead!

Our first Going Glocal Meetup was held on February 23 2021, co-hosted by SDN Dallas and SDN Monterrey, with a focus on business, education and ethics. Lead by Birgit Mager (Professor at KISD, and SDN President), Jamin Hegman (VP Experience Strategy at Capital One, and SDN Leadership Team) and Gabriela Salinas (Co-Founder & CEO of Service Design Mexico + Frontstage, and SDN Monterrey Chapter Lead), attendees of our event joined in a lively discussion designed to explore the future, tackle its challenges and look for opportunities to collaborate. Video of the event is available in the ‘Watch and Learn’ section of the SDN’s website. https:// www.service-design-network.org/ watch-and-learn Future Going Glocal Meetups include one hosted by SDN Finland in April 2021 and a third hosted by SDN Japan in June 2021.

Access to these events represents just one of many unique benefits of paid membership to the SDN. Stay tuned for details!

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SDN Accreditation: Explore Our New Programme The SDN Accreditation Programme, initiated in 2017, is continuously developing to meet our growing community's needs and expectations, and we are pleased to share with you our latest developments: — We have redefined our programme: The SDN Accreditation Programme has evolved to be a formal validation that recognises excellence in the delivery of service design projects, training and the full spectrum of competency within the field of service design.

We have expanded our — programme: The programme has grown to offer four levels of service design accreditation: Practitioner, Professional, Master and Organisational accreditation.

We are introducing Practitioner — accreditation: Through the Practitioner accreditation process, the SDN will certify individuals with fundamental competency in service design, lending credibility to their practice and supporting them in pursuing a career in the field of service design.

We have updated the Professional — and Master levels: The update of these levels’ labels – formerly known as Trainer and Master Trainer – as well as their

prerequisites and benefits, reflects the transformation of the SDN Accreditation Programme and all our efforts to make the accreditation truly valuable for both our accredited service designers and the service design community.

We have introduced Organisational — accreditation: Through the Organisational accreditation process, the SDN will continue to certify organisations that provide service design education, qualification and/or consultancy services at a consistently high standard.

The SDN Accreditation Programme has many benefits. One of them is the opportunity for individuals and organisations to build professional credibility within the field of service design with an independent accreditation from the Service Design Network, while helping to create transparency within the industry.

Visit our new landing page to learn more about our new programme and while you are at it, consider applying for your SDN accreditation: www.service-design-network.org/ accreditation-programme-portal

Written by Cristine Lanzoni, Service Designer and Project Manager for the SDN Accreditation Programme at the SDN HQ, Germany.

Touchpoint 12-2 83

SDN Academy On-demand: Learning on Your Time, at Your Own Pace Russian and Chinese language courses kick-off The SDN Academy recognises that sometimes attending our live, online courses does not necessarily fit into our students’ hectic schedules, or their time zones. That is why we are (quietly) debuting a new on-demand platform to support those of you who require online learning opportunities outside of a fixed schedule.

The SDN Academy is launching this new initiative to provide service design practitioners of all levels with compelling content through a platform that makes it possible to learn at their own pace. Follow a course, pause, and then resume it as many times and as often as you like.

On-demand courses also offer the

84 Touchpoint 12-2

added benefit of a course preview, to help ensure a course meets your expectations prior to purchase!

On-demand course offering To start, we are pleased to release two original courses from two acclaimed and seasoned professional trainers.

For our Russian-speaking community, SDN-Accredited Trainer Olga Strelnyk has developed a ninehour, fully-immersive programme designed to 1) delve deep into the topic of service design 2) learn about the various methods/tools involved in its application and 3) genuinely understand how the practice is positioned to solve real-world challenges. That’s service design education from A-Z. The second course in our on-demand line-up comes from invited trainer Cathy Huang, who is well-established as a service design pioneer in China.

This Chinese-language course looks to explore how service design has emerged as a product of a new era, thanks to the transformation of global industrial structures from an “industrial-based economy” to a “service-oriented economy”, from her perspective in China. Watch Cathy break the geographical barriers and take you, in under an hour, into a new world of applications of service design.

Learn more about the courses and sign up at https://on-demand.sdnacademy.org/

r u b ri k

How can I read Touchpoint?

Printed copies Individual printed copies can be purchased via the SDN website.

Benefits for SDN Members SDN members are entitled to a free printed copy of each new issue of Touchpoint (p­ostage cost not included).

In addition, SDN members r­ eceive a 50% discount on back issues (Touchpoint Vol. 1 to Touchpoint Vol. 6).

Online access Full-issue PDFs can be purchased via the SDN website and via Issuu.

Articles from our archive can be read online via the SDN website by becoming a community member for free.

Selected articles may be read via Issuu website and app and are also published on Medium.

Benefits for SDN Members SDN members have access to full-issue PDFs and articles at no charge, up to and including the most recent issue.

www.service-design-network.org Touchpoint 11-1 85

Become part of the Service Design Network Belong to a strong network and play a role in strengthening the practice of service design!

Become a Member

Touchpoint Journal

Local Chapters

Touchpoint is the first and only journal dedicated to the practice of service design.

Published by practitioners for practitioners, Touchpoint is essential reading for both newcomers and seasoned experts.

SDN Chapters are vibrant communities in which service designers can connect, create and exchange knowledge at a local level. Join one of the existing chapters or build a new one in your country or area.

Personal Profile

Community Knowledge

Create your own profile and establish yourself within the SDN community! With your personal profile on our website you will be visible to a global community of potential clients, peers and partners.

SDN encourages you to share your thoughts and insights with the service design community. Self publish articles, projects and opinion pieces via our website in the Community Knowledge section.

Event Discounts

Case Study Library

We grant our members discount on our global and national conferences, on contributions to the Servcice Design Award, on partner events and much more.

Discover our growing resource of real case studies – from different industries, the public sector as well as social innovation projects.

About the Service Design Network The Service Design Network is the global centre for recognising and promoting excellence in the field of service design. Through national and international events, online and print publications, and coordination with academic institutions, the network connects multiple disciplines within agencies, business, and government to strengthen the impact of service design both in the public and private sector. www.service-design-network.org

Photo: Fernando Galdino

KEY BENEFITS FOR MEMBERS