A story of an in-house service designer: what was I thinking?
Why I accepted the job offer in the first place?
Service Design is still new and exciting, whether we are working with B2C or B2B services. This is both a blessing and a curse, because there’s a lot of opportunities to learn (as well as unlearn). My intention is to help others who are in similar situation to find takeaways and ideas, and also to document my own journey.
The tipping point
My responsibility, as a designer, was to do something. The offer that came my way wasn’t just an offer; it was an opportunity to pursue a new career path and to leave behind an old way of thinking.
As a designer who wants to make a difference in the world, I felt conflicted about the work I have been offered next to the role I would play in this system.
Designers are often concerned about the ethics of their work. We’re aware of the potential harmful effects that our designs can have on people and our environment, so we want to do right by them. It’s important to make sure that your designs don’t contribute to any negative outcomes, and it’s just as important to make sure that your client is aware of these concerns. If a designer isn’t comfortable with the work they’re doing, then they probably shouldn’t be doing it.
Service design is a relatively new approach to design based on the real needs of people and organisations rather than relying on assumptions and perceptions based on marketing or other arbitrary criteria. It’s not just about designing websites or apps, but also involves working with stakeholders to take into account the social and economic context as well as any cultural aspects. Service design is doing good while doing well.
What if we could apply this approach to the context of the oil company? What if we could use our skills to help a company change its business model? As designers, we’re taught to ask questions and challenge assumptions — why should it be any different when those assumptions are made here?
What better place to start than within the system itself?
Why not start at the top and use my skills as a service designer to influence change?
Then at some point, it hit me. Complaining is not really helping anyone. Instead of complaining, what can I do to make a real change? If you want change to happen, be a part of that. It is a perfect place to start, from the centre. Instead of only criticising or blaming, why don’t you influence the system and put your effort. A great opportunity to create an impact!
So I decided to join with a mission in mind.
What about working “in-house”?
At that time, offer was an interesting concept to me. Something I had been thinking about that but I hadn’t much chance or opportunities.
I had experience working as service design consultants in organisations before but I never work truly as an in-house.
When you work in an agency or as a consultant, most of the case, problem space has already been defined. The customer would approach with a certain problems that are already been (vaguely) framed. As a service designer, although you get to challenge the brief frequently (and you should), it is not more than tweaking what has been asked.
Another major key difference of working for your client is that you focus on your craft, not how to make use of your work. Your impact and your effort are being measured by the output you have created.The longer journeys you print, the better designer you are. The nicer looking, the better output.
It is more like that at the end of your assignment, you present your output to project owner or a bunch of stakeholders. You hang those journeys on a wall and you go through them during the meeting. After you present your output to project owner or a bunch of stakeholders, everyone claps. You feel happy. Tears of joy rolling down your cheeks.
At the end, you roll the posters and deliver to customer. Customer puts them in a corner. And, you are assigned to a new project.
Most of the case, those projects were not rolled-out at all. Isn’t this demotivating? What is the purpose of your effort? And more importantly, what happened after you deliver? How all your work will be implemented?
Possibly you work on to understand customer pain-points or opportunities. Maybe you suggest some initiations.
Very well. But do you know how the insights and opportunities you have brought to the table will be implemented? How your work will be implemented in the organisation?
Most of the work, I have involved in was to help the project owner to convince senior stakeholders for budget next year.
I wanted to see the impact of my work. I wanted to see the implementations of the decisions.
So I decided to join with a mission in mind.
Service design — from a strategy to tactical work
Within my time, as an in-house service designer, I was no longer (just) execute assignments like I used to do in consultancy but recreate them, transform them into engaging, more impactful journeys where I could create an impact in the organisation for a better future. It might sound easier than actually doing it.
What made me the happiest in that moment was that I could actually define my work and execute what is required to create compelling products. I made a direct impact on my product team by helping to land on user and business while managing the change and measuring the impact.
What made me excited that now I can see how things move from ideation to deployment and to change management end-to-end and how high-level strategic work would be broken into user stories and eventually to a piece of software. Before this experience, I was aware of the process. I have participated bit and pieces but I never got a chance to roll up my sleeves to deal with this beast completely.
Ok. Don’t get too excited, yet. Because I haven’t explained the most exciting part. I think the most fascinating part, if you work as an in-house service designer, the organisation becomes your material; departments, siloed functions, their people and goals, motivations. They are all yours. Gems to collect, to assess, to test and to learn. It is the place where you need to discover, define, design, implement the changes and measure the impact.
This is the part that is very difficult to see if you are working as consultant or working at agency.
Responsibility of in-house service designer
A lot of service designers are getting confused by this part in the similar context. Responsibilities are very diverse from one organisation to another. At least in each position that I have worked, my responsibilities were quite different.
A service designer is someone who takes a holistic approach to improving the interactions between people and services, products, brands and organisations. Service designers are interested in how we can improve the experience of using services, both for individuals and for businesses, governments and other institutions.
Service design is particularly useful when it comes to creating digital services. These are things like websites, apps and software that we use to interact with brands and organisations.
Service designers are different from interaction designers and user experience (UX) designers. Interaction design is about making interfaces work well. UX design is about making sure that a product or service is useful, usable and satisfying for the people who use it. Service design can take all this into account but also focuses on the broader experience of people’s relationships with organisations or brands. The overall experience of a person’s relationship with an organisation might include aspects such as:
- how easy it is to find information
- how information is displayed or communicated
- how easy it is to contact an organisation or individual within the organisation
- the quality of customer support offered by the organisation, and so on.
I have been assigned to a project team in order them to help with their process. My ultimate goal was to increase adoption of design thinking and lean innovation methodology.
Enterprise product development is fun! (if you like challenge)
I have been appointed as a service designer and also design lead of the product to make sure that we are solving the right (desirable-viable and feasible) problem next to the best possible solution we work on to enhance (business) goals of our users.
Each product team had the autonomy. We worked with a start-up mindset.
Very high level framework is provided by the leadership but it was not operational. I have facilitated the process that we have built together as a team on the top of that product development framework.
Subsequently, I make sure that product will land smoothly, change in business processes, job descriptions and even in the business unit we are designing for. If I look back now, definitely this part was the most challenging part. Together with change manager, product owner and product sponsors we needed to work continuously to make sure that the product will land on smoothly and adopted by our user.
Digitalisation & design thinking effort: This is not a sprint, it is a marathon!
Not every industry has been digitally transformed, yet!
The urgency of digitalisation has never been the topic in some industries like oil industry until now. On the top of the public and governmental pressures, with high competition, the entire industry is moving towards carbon neutral and renewables energies faster than ever. (and they should!) They realised a while ago but they have a is giant IT and organisational legacy that makes is very challenging to move.
Current systems, processes are not scalable, they are very old and barely managing matured decreasing market.
Being an in-house designer is a very slow pacing and very rough journey as you can imagine. You need a lot of patience and stability. Your soft-skills play way more important role than working at an agency. In my previous experiences, I worked with the clients that have interest in what I do, clients were really excited about service design thinking and doing. That’s why they hired me!
It is different when you work in an organisation.
I didn’t realise that I have never worked in an environment that service design is not known as a discipline before. Again, this brings a lot of advantages and challenges. This fact puts you in a very different seat than working for clients. At the end of two years, I can see that 70% of my job was soft-training, promoting service design thinking in the wider part of the organisation and navigating corporate politics.
Imagine yourself in the middle of a battlefield where the culture of the organisation is fully against service design, with various stakeholders and internal politics. The only ways to make things happen is by proving that you are valuable, your methods are valuable and probably by fighting for it.
The good thing is that you take over the people that were more than a year in this position. They were doing this job and fighting for design in the organisation and the whole time. From their experience you can learn a lot.
The hardest challenge was to do the work, to show it and prove it. I am excited to share the things that we have done, but it is not easy to convince the management that you are not just a fluff, what you do is really important.
When you design a service, you need to understand the organisation and its structure, politics and goals. You need to know what was the design thinking like in the moment you joined, how and by whom it was applied and how you could use it. To be successful in your work, you need to be able to understand and navigate the context in which you operate.
Navigate the context
You need to know how the organisation works and what the organisation is trying to achieve. Those factors will affect you in many ways. Every organisation is different, differs in size and tends to be different specialised areas, but they are all connected in one way or the other. I always say that it is like a tree that needs nurturing, pruning and keeping it alive.
It is worth doing! As a designer, you will have an opportunity to work on projects that will help the company to move towards doing business in a sustainable way. Projects that help employees to save energy, to use less plastic and to make decisions that are environmentally friendly. Projects that help employees to take good care of their health. It is a huge opportunity to be a part of this change. Change is good.
As a designer, you have an opportunity to develop this thing further, to understand the context fully, to find the right people that can help you to do your work. You will have opportunity to engage with people that you wouldn’t have this opportunity to meet otherwise.
You have an opportunity to be a part of creating the change, not just promoting it.
The impact is huge and even though you will face a lot of challenges, it is worth doing.
Things I wish I would’ve known before being an in-house service designer
You are not alone. The odds are good you will fall into one of these traps at some point during your career as a service designer.
If you are in a similar position, you’re probably feeling a bit overwhelmed right now. The good news is: you’re not alone. And the even better news is: you can make it through this. We’ll help you learn how to learn, how to adapt, how to find more meaning on a daily basis and how to push through moments when everything seems so unclear that you don’t know what to do anymore.
Not all the industrials are at the same level when it comes to digital transformation.
Most of the things which were really obvious to me, were not even thought in this industry. This was the first shock. At some points, I felt like we are building a software for the late nineties that our users want to stay. In my opinion, this has two sides:
On one side, you will be overwhelmed by the possibilities where you can create an impact. By the opportunities that you can take, nurture and create the desired impact that you want. You know that it will work. Several examples from cross industries validate the point. Human-centred approach to any problem will generates higher values and helps the organisation to mitigate the risks better.You did that before. You used this storyline several times already.
On the other hand, you will feel exhausted by the effort you need to put to get the gears rolling. Everything takes time. You will feel like moving 2 step forward and one step backward. At the end of the day, it be somewhere in between.
You will be challenged by the mindset of people and you will have to be more persuasive than you ever thought you could be.
You will face all the problems which you never thought about.
To me, it is the mindset which was the biggest challenge: how to shift from a reactive organisation to a proactive one. From the assumption that whatever happens, we are ready and we are able to react to it, to the assumption that we will be able to anticipate the events and act.
How to change the business mind-set? And the entire organisation?
How to create a culture which is ready to take the responsibility and to change?
Don’t rush it. The idea is not to change everything every year and so you will have to be careful not to do that.
I had to learn to be patient.
To be patient for my boss, for my team and for the organisation.
I think it is the best advice I can give from the personal experience.
How can we make the design perceived as a business strategy?
And what you can do as a service designer?
When we are working as in-house service designer, we get how important and essential to understand and to speak the business lingo.
What I can strongly suggest is that try not to use much of service design lingo at the beginning.
Most of the organisations like mine, speaks a completely different language that it took me weeks to understand the meetings I was in. It is fine. You are here not for a quick win but for a long term impact.
When you start talking with the same lingo, people in your organisation will start seeing you as an authority, they will start trusting you and what you are saying. It’s a big advantage.
You have to get in the comfort zone of business people. They are your colleagues, partners, bosses. They are important. However, the way that a designer sees the world is not the same way that a business analyst and the boss sees the world.
That’s why it is important that designers will have a voice in decision making and should be included in business conversations. Have your say (and make your cases).
Sometimes the business stakeholder argues that it is a bad idea because the clients will not like it, and the boss says it will mean trouble with them.
So you have to be able to argue that “it will save money, they will like it, and it will be better for them”. Arguing that the design solution is better is not enough if you want the business people to listen. You have to be able to argue for your case in business terms: money, clients, teachers.
Design does give companies an edge, but you should be aware that you’re joining a conversation that is already happening.
The design process is difficult and takes time to get right. Try not to disrupt it. Although bringing in new practices into the old ways of doing things may be exciting, remember that you’re joining a conversation that is already happening. If you throw in too many changes too quickly, or if you’re not careful about how you implement them, you may disrupt the process, and your change efforts will be for naught.
It is ok not to speak business language or have 5 years experience in the industry. It is not the end of the world and you have some qualities that they admire — you are customer-oriented, you are highly valuable in a team, your problem solving skills are really good.
These skills and qualities should definitely outweigh the fact that you have no real “business language”. The service design tool and process approach is a great deal-breaker.
I was not a very confident speaker. Like other designers, I prefer to work on my own and design interactive products to reach the customers and help them solve their problems. Before I started working here, I knew the value of communication and speaking up in strategic conversations. But I had never used only my voice to convince others. But in the company’s culture, where everyone is a great speaker, and everybody speaks up; it was quite a big challenge at first (I am a designer, I like to design not to speak!) but the service design methodology, its toolkit and probs helped me compensate for my average verbal communication. I was not an impressive speaker but I have impressed them equally with my probs!
It is ok not to speak business language. It is not the end of the world. You still have several qualities that they admire. Service design tools and probs are great deal-breaker for everyone.
end of part 1/2
This is a series of two posts on working in service design in an organisation.
I have revised, recollected and reframe my notes into these posts. Each one focusing on different perspectives. Second post will more focus on design leadership.
I hope you find it interesting. If you like my writing and want to read more from me please say a few words so I can understand where my interests are most appreciated.
