Service Design Show

Service Design Show

A show where we go beyond the basic service desig…

  • 1 hour 1 minute
    How To Stay "Stubbornly Human" in an AI World / Inside Service Design / Ep. #07

    Here is a hot take, empathy is becoming "theater"...

    I mean, it's that feeling you get when you receive a "hyper-personalized" yet clearly automated email saying "We are so deeply sorry to see you go".

    To me, it just feels insincere. Actually, it even feels manipulative.

    Instead of a genuine connection, it’s a performance designed to "manage" me, not help me.

    As every business out there is in a race to automate and integrate AI, the actual human connection is often the first thing to get outsourced.

    And when we try to paste humanity back onto technology, we often end up in a digital uncanny valley.

    So, how do we push back?

    How do we remain "stubbornly human" when the systems around us only care about efficiency?

    That is the battle we explore in the latest episode of our Inside Service Design series.

    In this conversation, I sit down with two service design professionals from very different worlds: ​Jeff​, who works in the highly digital fintech space, and ​Emilie​, an Innovation Partner at a faith-based nonprofit.

    Despite their different contexts, they share some great insights on keeping the "human" in human-centered design.

    Jeff breaks down the concept of Empathy Theater and challenges us to spot when a friendly tone in a digital interface crosses the line into manipulation. And Emilie walks us through a future scenario where VR headsets are the default for education, forcing us to ask: how do we design for belonging when we are physically apart?

    So, if you are tired of seeing the human element get optimized out of existence, this conversation will give you some strong arguments you need to stand your ground.

    Quick question: Have you received an email recently that felt like "Empathy Theater"? If yes, send me a quick reply with "Guilty" (bonus points if you can share the example)!

    I'm trying to get a sense of how widespread this is becoming.

    Enjoy the conversation and keep making a positive impact.

    Be well,

    ~ Marc


    --- [ 1. GUIDE ] ---

    00:00 Welcome to October Round Up

    05:00 Emilie's Service Design Journey

    07:30 Jeff from Interior Design to FinTech

    12:30 Jeff's Biggest In-House Design Challenge

    15:00 Challenges in Non-Profit Design

    18:00 Emilie's True Measure of Success

    20:00 How Jeff Measures Success in Long-Term Projects

    25:00 Emilie's topic: Education in 2038

    29:00 Jeff's topic: Keep Things 'Stubbornly Human'

    33:45 The Circle Reacts to Insincere Digital Tone

    36:45 How Emilie's group responded

    39:00 Emilie's Hopeful Reflection on the Future of Design

    40:00 The Practical Tweak Jeff Made

    43:00 Emilie's #1 Hard-Won Career Lesson

    45:30 Jeff's Hard-Won Lesson in Service Design

    46:30 When Jeff Stopped Focusing on Deliverables

    51:00 Why Beautiful Artifacts Don't Impress Executives

    53:00 How to Stop the Treadmill

    54:30 Emilie's Question to the Audience

    55:30 Jeff Answers the Question He Wants to Ask

    57:30 Emilie Answers Her Own Deep Question

    59:00 Final words of wisdom


    --- [ 2. LINKS ] ---


    --- [ 3. CIRCLE ] ---

    Join our private community for in-house service design professionals.

    ⁠https://servicedesignshow.com/circle


    --- [4. FIND THE SHOW ON] ---

    11 December 2025, 7:00 am
  • 1 hour 9 minutes
    Designing for the Long Game: Self-Care as Professional Rigor / Rachael Dietkus / Ep. #242

    We often hear the "mantra" to move fast and break things...

    But what happens when the thing that breaks is you?

    For many service design professionals, this is the reality of their calendar: back-to-back meetings, a rush to deliver, and very little space to actually think.

    In many organizations, there is a culture that views this busyness as a badge of honor.

    But our guest in this episode, Rachael Dietkus, has quite a different -and healthier- approach.

    She has a rule written on a post-it note right next to her desk: "No meetings before 10 AM".

    This might sound like a luxury, doesn't it?

    But Rachael, who's a licensed clinical social worker and designer, argues that rules like this are actually a professional necessity.

    Rachael is the founder of Social Workers Who Design, where she is bridging the gap between the deep, ethical frameworks of social work and the often frantic pace of design.

    This is an eye-opening episode where we explore why service design might be missing a "manual" that social workers have had for decades.

    You'll hear about:

    • Why we need to move beyond just empathy to genuine care and compassion.
    • The importance of having a structured "safe space" to process your work (social workers spend at least 1 hour in supervision for every 40 hours of work!).
    • Why setting hard boundaries is actually a sign of competence and professionalism, not weakness.

    So, if you sometimes feel the weight of the work is getting too much and you're looking for ways to create a healthier, more sustainable work environment, this conversation offers practical clues.

    As we are almost wrapping up the year, it's an important reminder that reflection on our work isn't a nice to have, but a healthy habit we should all embrace.

    Enjoy the conversation and keep making a positive impact.

    Be well,

    ~ Marc


    --- [ 1. GUIDE ] ---

    00:00 Welcome to Episode 242

    04:00 Making Care an Integral Part of Practice

    09:00 Recognizing Care (or the Lack Thereof) in Project Pacing

    14:00 Difference Between 'Careless' and 'Care-full' Design

    17:30 How Rachel's Path to Care Began

    26:30 Human Rights and Social Work Foundation

    38:45 What Design Can Learn from Social Work

    46:15 Radical Act of Slowing Down

    52:30 Practical Steps to Build Spaciousness & Combat Workaholism

    57:45 Setting Boundaries

    1:01:15 Boundaries as Professional Resistance

    1:03:45 Takeaway She Hopes You Get

    1:05:15 Piece of Advice

    1:05:45 Question to ponder


    --- [ 2. LINKS ] ---


    --- [ 3. CIRCLE ] ---

    Join our private community for in-house service design professionals.

    ⁠https://servicedesignshow.com/circle


    --- [4. FIND THE SHOW ON] ---

    4 December 2025, 7:00 am
  • 1 hour 8 minutes
    How Vertical Storytelling Helps Translate Empathy into Business Value / Journey Management Playbook / Ep. #08

    Okay, we are pretty good storytellers... but are we telling the right story?

    As service design professionals, we nail it when it comes to what I call "Horizontal Storytelling".

    We can walk anyone through the customer journey, step-by-step, building empathy for the user's pain and frustration over time.

    But here is the somewhat inconvenient truth: As you might have experienced, your CEO or CFO often doesn't know what to do with that story. They are looking for something else.

    They need "Vertical Storytelling".

    They need to know how a specific pain point on the ground connects up to the strategic objectives of the business. They need to know the ROI. They need to know if the needle is actually moving.

    In episode 8 of the Journey Management Playbook series, Tingting Lin and I are closing the loop.

    We are moving from doing the work to measuring the impact.

    If you’ve ever struggled to justify prove that your journey management efforts are actually influencing the bottom line, this episode is for you.

    We dive into:

    • How you can translate customer empathy into business language to get buy-in.
    • Why you can't just rely on churn or NPS as your metrics, and how to find early warning signals that prove your work is having an effect now.
    • How to connect your solutions back to the original business challenge to see if you actually solved the problem.
    • And how to start measuring impact today without having to wait for perfect data integrations.

    This episode provides the missing link between "making mapping a journey" and "driving business outcomes."

    What is the one metric you struggle to track the most? Send me a reply or leave a comment on YouTube, we’d love to know where the biggest data hurdles are for you.

    Enjoy and keep making a positive impact!

    Be well,

    ~ Marc


    --- [ 1. LINKS 🔗 ] ---

    👉 Playbook Slides -

    ✅ Sign up for TheyDo - https://go.servicedesignshow.com/scjwb


    --- [ 2. GUIDE ] ---

    01:00 What's in store episode 08

    03:45 Power of Vertical Storytelling

    05:30 Proving Your Journey Map Worth the Investment

    07:00 Biggest Mistake People Make in Journey Mapping

    11:00 When a Simple Insight Changes Everything

    16:30 'Horizontal' View vs. the 'Vertical'

    23:00 How to Operationalize Your Journey Map

    25:00 Start Small, But Map the Full Customer Story

    26:00 Closing the Loop and Feedback Mechanisms

    30:00 Summary: 3 Pillars of a Successful Journey Strategy

    31:34 Differentiating Horizontal and Vertical Stories

    33:00 Overcoming Internal Resistance to New Mapping

    36:00 Stakeholders as customers

    38:45 Translating Empathy into Actionable Design

    39:45 Mapping an Employee Onboarding Journey

    45:00 Debunking misconceptions

    50:30 Software and Resources We Recommend

    54:45 Second Essential Technique

    58:00 Final Takeaways & Last-Minute Advice

    1:00:00 5 Practical Tips You Can Implement Today


    --- [ 3. FIND THE SHOW ON ] ---

    27 November 2025, 7:00 am
  • 1 hour 9 minutes
    The Missing Link Between Service Design and Business Goals / Mark Howell / Ep. #241

    Service design, so what...

    That's a question still many people around us (rightfully) ask.

    And let's be honest, they'll probably keep asking it for the foreseeable future.

    It will take a very long time before our field becomes a household name, which I doubt it ever will.

    Now, it’s easy to get frustrated about this, to roll our eyes every time someone questions the value of our work.

    But that frustration isn't going to get us any closer to creating the impact we know we can.

    A much more productive approach is to prepare for these questions, to have our answers ready before they even get asked.

    This also helps us to better recognize when we end up in situations where, no matter what we say or do, our message about service design just stand a chance of resonating.

    We do everyone a favor by acknowledging this. Sometimes it's just not the right place or the right time.

    But where do we learn which stories to tell, when and to whom, and which stories we should avoid?

    Well, we can take some clues from Mark Howell, our guest this in this episode.

    Mark is a seasoned professional who's led some of the largest in-house service design teams I've heard of. This achievement becomes even more impressive when you consider he did this in industries not exactly known for their human-centered thinking.

    In our conversation, we explore how Mark used tools like a "service design quality assessment" to have the right conversations with stakeholders. We talk about how he learned to identify the red flags that signal it's time to find a different project, and we dig into the key role community plays in building a successful service design practice.

    I'm really excited about this episode because we just don't have many examples of people who have scaled service design teams to these kinds of numbers. And we have even fewer who are willing to share the real learnings from that journey.

    So, if you have the ambition to grow service design, this is a fantastic conversation to get some best practices and hear about the pitfalls to avoid.

    What stuck with me from our chat is recognizing that sometimes you need to take a step back instead of just trying to push forward (and burning out in the process).

    I would love to hear from you: What's a key signal for you? What's the clue that gives away that it's time to stop pushing and find a different battle?

    Enjoy and keep making a positive impact!

    ~ Marc


    --- [ 1. GUIDE ] ---

    00:00 Welcome to Episode 241

    05:00 Positioning Service Designers

    09:00 Cracking the Organizational Nut

    13:30 the 3 disciplines to drive perspective

    20:00 His Take on Journey Mapping

    25:30 Lessons Learned

    29:00 The Red Flags of a Failing Project

    31:45 How to Spot Red Flags

    34:30 The 4 Quality Indicators

    40:00 Defining the Indicators

    46:00 Collecting Design Quality Data

    48:30 The Design Community of Practice

    56:45 Aligning with Product Manager OKRs

    1:02:00 Question to ponder


    --- [ 2. LINKS ] ---


    --- [ 3. CIRCLE ] ---

    Join our private community for in-house service design professionals.

    ⁠https://servicedesignshow.com/circle


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    20 November 2025, 7:00 am
  • 1 hour 2 minutes
    How to Win In-House: Don't Take Your True Superpowers For Granted / Inside Service Design / Ep. #06

    Have you ever thought about...

    What a therapist, a grandma, and an organ donor teach you about service design?

    I know, this might sound like the start of a strange joke, but it gets to the heart of a big truth about our work.

    We invest a lot of time perfecting our journey maps, blueprints, and personas.

    But as we know, the challenges we work on won't be solved by a deliverable.

    They're solved through invisible "tools" like subtle influence, creating space for others, and building strategic relationships.

    So, where do you find these tools? Well, this episode is a great start.

    This episode is part of our "Inside Service Design" series, where we explore the real, unpolished practice of driving change from within organizations.

    And just like in the previous episodes you get to hear two brilliant in-house professionals, share some of their most powerful, non-traditional strategies. This time we're joined by Irina Damascan and Gina Mendolia.

    Gina walks us through her concept of "Setting the Trap" for engagement, and how she draws inspiration from the roles of therapists, coaches, and even grandmas to master the art of creating space and enabling teams to connect the dots themselves.

    Irina introduces a powerful model for influence she calls the "Organ Donor Chain," a strategic way to build networks of reciprocity by doing "favors" that enable change across the organization, often in unexpected ways.

    I have to say, it was refreshing to hear about effective mental models that go beyond design-as-usual, which aren't just theories but truly help to design better services.

    Want to add some (unconventional) tools that help you drive change to your toolkit? Grab your notebook and join us for this conversation.

    What's the most unconventional place you've found inspiration for your work? Maybe a different profession, a hobby, a movie? Share your inspiration in the comments on YouTube and let's continue the conversation there.

    Keep making a positive impact!

    ~ Marc


    --- [ 1. GUIDE ] ---

    00:00 Welcome

    04:30 Who is Ben

    06:00 How Heydn got his role

    07:15 What Heydn is currently doing

    08:15 Ben working at a financial services firm

    10:15 who Ben is reporting to

    11:30 where Autodesk sits

    13:15 what a good looks like for Heydn

    16:30 indicators of success

    17:30 what success looks like for Ben

    23:30 Why Context Determines Your SD Strategy

    27:00 Ben's topic: the first 90 days

    30:45 Heydn's key takeaway

    35:00 Making Your Map Complicated on Purpose

    37:00 Ben's takeaway

    43:00 the last time he has done the first 90 days

    46:45 Heydn reacting

    48:45 Learning things the hard way

    51:00 Ben's hard lessons

    55:00 what keeps him motivated

    57:30 what will Heydn get back there

    1:00:00 Ben to summarize

    1:00:30 Heydn's final words of wisdom


    --- [ 2. LINKS ] ---


    --- [ 3. CIRCLE ] ---

    Join our private community for in-house service design professionals.

    ⁠https://servicedesignshow.com/circle


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    13 November 2025, 7:00 am
  • 1 hour 6 minutes
    This Is Your Competitive Advantage As A Design Leader / Jose Coronado / Ep. #240

    We've got a serious problem...

    The "higher" you climb on the career ladder, the further removed you get from the actual discipline of design.

    Unfortunately, it's a story I hear surprisingly often.

    A design professionals finally gets that hard-earned seat at the table, and almost immediately, the pressure to conform kicks in.

    They start to feel like they have to trade their unique perspective for a corporate persona, leaving their design identity, the very thing that got them there in the first place, at the door.

    Our guest this week, Jose Coronado, shares a personal story that actually goes right to the heart of this issue.

    When he first moved to the U.S. he consciously separated his professional life from his Hispanic background in an effort to belong and be seen.

    The shift only came years later, after he organized a panel for Hispanic Heritage Month. The feedback he received hit him hard.

    People told him, "Jose, thank you for doing this. I have never seen myself reflected in my future as a potential leader in the design field".

    That experience was the moment he realized the power of bringing our "whole self" to work, and the danger of hiding parts of our identity.

    So in this episode, we explore this identity crisis.

    How do you evolve into a business leader without abandoning your design soul?

    And I can already share that it's not about renouncing your craft, but rather enriching it with new layers.

    It’s about learning to navigate the politics and negotiations of an organization while still proudly carrying the flag for design.

    If you feel trapped between the design professional you are and the leader you're expected to be, this one will surely resonate.

    What I loved about this conversation is the nuance it brings. I'm sure you've heard that "designers need to speak business" but what's often missing is the crucial second half of that advice, we must do it with our design expertise, identity, and skills. Business speak should enrich design, not replace it.

    Enjoy the conversation and keep making a positive impact!

    ~ Marc


    --- [ 1. GUIDE ] ---

    00:00 Welcome to Episode 240

    04:00 The great shift

    06:00 The catalyst

    08:00 Design Leadership and Why We Have to Talk About It

    09:30 Design's Growing Pains

    12:00 3 Levels of Leadership

    13:00 Craftsmanship, Stagemanship, and Statesmanship

    16:00 Mastering Stagemanship:

    17:45 What we're doing wrong

    20:00 Developing Business Fluency

    22:00 Understanding the context

    26:30 Low-Effort Ways to Gain Business Knowledge

    33:00 The Challenge of Invisibility

    35:00 Patience vs. Incompetence

    37:45 Building Trust

    39:00 The Design Measurement Problem

    41:00 Tangibility of Impact

    44:00 Navigating conversations like that

    46:45 Finance Conversations

    48:00 Connecting Process, Service Improvement, and Design

    51:45 Internal Struggle and Mindset Evolution

    55:00 Embracing out identity

    57:30 Maintaining Connection to the Craft

    59:00 Deliver in commitment

    1:01:00 Question to ponder


    --- [ 2. LINKS ] ---


    --- [ 3. CIRCLE ] ---

    Join our private community for in-house service design professionals.

    ⁠https://servicedesignshow.com/circle


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    6 November 2025, 7:00 am
  • 1 hour 3 minutes
    How to Integrate Journey Management with Your Existing Workflows / Journey Management Playbook #7

    Here's the big problem with journey maps...

    It's often like you've composed a masterpiece, but no one is there to actually play it.

    This is what I feel when I see a carefully crafted map (our version of "music on paper"), which ultimately fails to make an impact.

    Sure, we do the research, map the insights, and identify opportunities, but on Monday morning, everyone just goes back to their old routines, checking off to-do items in Jira, ClickUp, or Asana.

    The map becomes an impressive visual, but it's disconnected from the way work is done.

    This is the implementation gap, and it's where most journey management efforts fail.

    So in episode 7 of the Journey Management Playbook series, Tingting Lin and I address this exact problem head-on.

    This isn't a guide about what to map rather, it's about how to plug your insights into the operational reality of your organization.

    We're moving beyond the theory and into the practical, day-to-day workflow.

    I even share my own project management setup, share how things get done in my business and we discuss how to bridge the gap between my project list and the customer journey.

    In this episode, you'll hear:

    * Why creating a "parallel workflow" for journey management is a recipe for failure.

    * How to "plug into" your organization's existing ceremonies.

    * A practical way to reverse-engineer your team's current project backlog and to connect it back to the journey.

    * The right way to use prioritization matrixes to spark stakeholder conversations and grow alignment.

    So if you want to make your journeys the driving force behind your daily decisions, not just another document lost on a hard drive or fading away on the wall, make sure you don't miss this one.

    --- [1. LINKS ] ---


    --- [ 2. GUIDE ] ---


    00:00 Welcome to TheyDo EP 07

    02:00 Implementation gap

    03:00 Defining the Operational Workflow

    06:00 The Practical Challenge

    09:00 Connecting the Triple Diamond to the Music Metaphor

    12:45 Understanding the big picture

    15:30 Connecting the churn-reduction journey map

    16:30 Journey Management to Project Management

    19:30 Modeling initiatives in TheyDo to show a successful integration approach

    21:30 How to Model Initiatives in TheyDo for Journey Linkage

    24:00 Linking Initiatives to Opportunities/Journeys

    25:30 Scoring Initiatives by Impact and Effort

    28:00 Connecting Discovery (TheyDo) to Delivery (ClickUp/JIRA)

    30:15 Context in the Journey Tool

    32:00 Bi-directional Synchronization

    34:00 How to set up the connectio

    35:45 Understanding the Organizational Workflow

    37:30 Handoffs between the Triple Diamond Workflow

    39:00 How to Implement the Workflow

    41:00 The needed Cultural shift

    42:00 Impact driven language

    44:30 How to handle non-journey work

    47:00 The Workflow is not a Designer's Job Alone

    49:00 Recap: The 4 steps

    50:30 Journey of the Journey Manager

    54:30 Journey Framework for Strategic Alignment

    56:30 Ensuring Business Value

    58:00 Scaling and Governance

    1:02:30 Coming Up Next


    --- [ 3. FIND THE SHOW ON ] ---

    30 October 2025, 7:00 am
  • 1 hour 6 minutes
    Why We Should Reframe Culture as a Design Challenge / Dan Szuc / Episode #239

    What is the thing biggest stopping you from doing meaningful work...

    When I listen to the service design professionals around me, it's often not the tools or methods they have access to.

    Rather, and you might recognize this, its often the organizational culture that's the biggest roadblock.

    Culture isn't the set of company values that are displayed on the wall. If only things were so simple

    Culture is materialized by actions. It's made up of the lived experiences of the people doing the work day in and day out.

    So, if the existing org culture is a roadblock, how can we change it?

    Because as we know, if there is one thing that's great at resisting change, it's culture.

    And do we even have a place here as service design professionals. Isn't this the field of expertise of strategy consultants?

    Well, our guest, Dan Szuc has been working on this question for the last 20 years.

    He's so deep into it that he written two books on this topic Make Meaningful Work and Make Meaningful Culture.

    And the good news is that, yes culture is 100% an area where we need to play a role.

    We can look at culture as a design material that can be shaped.

    In this episode we explore how that works in practice, where you even start and the pitfalls that you should be mindful.

    We get into practical techniques like "practice spotting", talk about "moments that matter" and explore the influence of leadership (and lack of it).

    This episode is for everyone who want's to contribute to making "shitty" work environments into ones that are better equipped to help you do meaningful work!

    Culture often feels like a huge, intangible and sometimes even scary topic to touch.

    I hope that this conversation help see that there are small, practical, tangible actions you can do to start shaping a better culture today and the confidence to do so!

    Enjoy and keep making a positive impact.

    Be well,


    --- [ 1. GUIDE ] ---

    00:00 Welcome to Episode 239

    04:00 Culture at work

    04:30 Moving Beyond "Soft Skills"

    06:45 Professional Acting to Organizational Culture

    10:30 Introducing SPARKLE

    13:00 the SPARKLE Acronym

    16:00 Small Acts, Big Change

    23:30 Power of Practice Spotting

    30:30 Why People Hesitate to Change

    34:00 Rules vs. Practice

    41:00 How to do practice spotting

    45:30 Challenge of Engagement

    50:30 Introducing New Practices to Your Team

    54:30 Small Practice to Organizational Shift

    57:00 Best case transformation

    1:00:15 What Dan is Working on Next

    1:02:30 Resources

    1:04:30 Question to ponder


    --- [ 2. LINKS ] ---


    --- [ 3. CIRCLE ] ---

    Join our private community for in-house service design professionals.

    ⁠https://servicedesignshow.com/circle


    -- [ 4. FIND THE SHOW ON ] ---

    23 October 2025, 6:00 am
  • 1 hour 10 minutes
    How to Escape the 'Stuck Middle' of Design Maturity / Giles Colborne / Ep. #238

    I recently started playing Padel...

    And like with all my new hobbies, I enjoy getting good gear.

    So after some research, I treated myself to a racket from the higher end of the market.

    Now, when I'm on the court playing and lose, I could (might) complain that my racket sucks.

    That it was "false advertising" because all the specs indicate that this is almost an unbeatable racket.

    But let's be honest, we both know that's probably not the case.

    It’s far more likely that I just don't yet know how to use this new "tool" to its fullest potential.

    You may be surprised to learn that this is strikingly similar to what happens in many organizations.

    They invest in building a service design capability, but after a while, they complain that it’s not delivering the game-changing results they hoped for.

    So, does service design suck?

    Well, according to the research our guest Giles Colborne has done, the answer is a definitive no. In fact, he found that companies with high design maturity grow at 9x times(!) the pace of everyone else.

    The problem, as Giles argues, isn't the tool. It's the interface between the design team and the rest of the business.

    It's like spending a small fortune on that pro-level racket, only to hold it upside down in the wrong hand, and then wonder why you're not winning any games.

    When organizations bring in service design without creating the right conditions for success, they end up frustrated and disillusioned.

    So, what can we do about it?

    The go-to response I often see in our field is that we tend to shout louder, to do a "roadshow" and "educate" the business on our value. But Giles explains why this is actually often the least effective approach.

    That's why in this episode, we explore how we can stop explaining the tool and start changing the way our organizations use it, making it easier for them to unlock its full potential.

    What's great about this is that it helps shift the perception of service design from an afterthought, a "nice-to-have" for keeping customers happy, to an engine for growth. And once that clicks, it becomes a whole different game. Now, I'm just hoping the same will be true for my padel skills...

    Enjoy the conversation and keep making a positive impact.

    Be well,

    ~ Marc


    --- [ 1. GUIDE ] ---

    00:00 Welcome to Episode 238

    01:00 Proving Measurable Impact

    03:30 Design is seen as a 'Nice-to-Have'

    05:00 The Board's View: Money First, UX Second

    08:30 The Checkout Gail

    11:00 Research: 9x Growth via Design Maturity

    15:00 The "Messy Middle" is an Interface Problem

    17:45 Stakeholder Trap: "Build Us One of These"

    22:15 Strategy: Investigate, Don't Educate

    26:30 Flipping the narrative

    28:30 Why Benefits Don't Resonate

    30:30 The "Gaslighting" Feeling

    33:30 Design is Not Incompatible with Business

    35:30 The Next Level: Culture and Governance

    36:45 Example: Flipping Compliance

    38:45 Process vs. Culture

    32:00 Start Point: Ask About Business Goals

    43:15 What the Org Really Values (Cost)

    44:45 Tough Questions for Stakeholders

    46:45 Anchoring CX in Governance

    49:00 Our Role in Measurement

    51:45 Mapping Value to Commander's Intent

    54:00 The Uncomfortable Aspect of Rigor

    57:30 Cultivating Confidence in Your Toolkit

    59:45 Leadership Over Arrogance

    1:03:00 3 Final Key Takeaways

    1:06:30 Resource Use: Automation and AI

    1:07:15 Question to Ponder

    1:08:15 Resources


    --- [ 2. LINKS ] ---


    --- [ 3. CIRCLE ] ---

    Join our private community for in-house service design professionals.

    ⁠https://servicedesignshow.com/circle


    -- [ 4. FIND THE SHOW ON ] ---

    9 October 2025, 6:00 am
  • 1 hour 11 minutes
    Learn the 2 key building blocks that turn your journey insights into action / JM Playbook / Ep #6

    Do you ever wonder about the "so what?" of your journey maps...

    To this day, I often see that journey mapping is treated as a "documentation" exercise.

    Basically as a way to visualize our customers experiences. And while having that visual overview is useful, it's just the beginning.

    As you probably know, the real challenge is turning that understanding into action that actually impacts your customers (and your business). Not a small challenge by any means.

    That's why this episode of The Journey Management Playbook is fully dedicated to it.

    We're already into episode six of the series, and if you haven't seen the previous ones, you can find the full playlist in the show notes.

    So far, we've gone from defining a business challenge to using AI to generate and enrich insights. We’ve covered how to structure and simplify your journey to be more action-biased.

    But all of that work is just a foundation.

    The journey map we've created is a reflection of the current state, and the key question still remains: What do we do now?

    In this episode, Tingting Lin from TheyDo and I finally answer that question. We dive into the crucial building blocks of opportunities and solutions, and you’ll see what is key to turning your journey maps from static documents into dynamic drivers of lasting business impact.

    We also tackle a few common pitfalls to avoid like:

    • Jumping to solutions before defining opportunities.
    • Cheating with the opportunity statement.
    • The tendency to over-document.
    • And turning journey management into a separate workflow.

    As you'll hear, this episode is again packed with practical advice to help you move beyond mapping to true journey management in the most effective way.

    What are your biggest challenges in moving from insights to action? Leave a comment on YouTube or Spotify, or reach out on LinkedIn. We'd love to hear from you.

    Enjoy and keep making a positive impact!

    Be well,

    ~ Marc


    ---[1. LINKS 🔗 ] ---

    👉 Playbook Slides - https://go.servicedesignshow.com/ofmtc

    ✅ Sign up for TheyDo - https://go.servicedesignshow.com/prcde


    --- [ 2. GUIDE ] ---

    01:00 Recap from previous episode

    04:00 Core Problem with Static Journey Maps

    06:00 Introducing the "Solutions" Building Block

    10:00 Defining "Opportunities"

    12:00 The triple diamond workflow

    15:30 Real-world opportunity

    16:00 Why we separate Opportunities & Solution

    18:30 Where to look for the opportunity first

    22:00 Off-boarding Problem as a Case Study

    24:30 Connecting the Problem to the Solution Quickly

    28:00 Distinguishing Between Problems and Opportunities

    32:00 Pain Point to an Opportunity

    36:30 Importance of Language in Naming Opportunities

    38:00 Debate About Using AI in this Process

    40:00 Who are we writing these opportunities for

    45:00 Connecting Opportunities to Strategic Objectives

    47:00 Summary of Opportunities

    49:00 Transitioning to "Solution" Blocks

    51:00 Example of a Concrete Solution

    59:45 Practicality of Using Solution Types

    1:02:00 Defining Statuses

    1:06:00 Connecting Solutions to Opportunities

    1:08:00 Final Summary


    --- [ 3. FIND THE SHOW ON ] ---

    2 October 2025, 6:00 am
  • 1 hour 9 minutes
    What if You Could Prove Your Impact With Just One Goal? / Stacey Barr / Ep. #237

    The things service design professionals have to deal with...

    Okay, so your boss tells you drive to a place with “a great view,” hands a full tank of gas, and wished good luck. Oh and by the way, we need to be there in 30-days, no compass, no map.

    Now take a guess, how likely is it that after a month you'll have arrived at exactly the location they had in mind. I'd say anything higher than 0 is an optimistic perspective.

    This sounds pretty absurd, right? But I'm not making it up.

    But how often have you been in that exact situation at work?

    The destination is vague, nobody can tell you where you are today, and there’s no way to know if your actions are actually moving you in the right direction.

    And the cherry on top is when you're asked for hard evidence that you're getting closer, while someone else gets praised for reporting a higher average speed than last week. Yeah, but dude, are we even moving in the right direction? So painful and frustrating.

    If you didn’t know better, you might think this is the plot of a bad comedy. But based on the conversations I'm having, this isn't an exception; it's the daily reality for most of you.

    So, what are we going to do about it?

    Even though the situation might feel a bit hopeless, the good news is that it’s certainly not.

    Last year, I had Stacey Barr on the show to talk about measurement. She’s spent her career becoming an expert in using measures as a truth seeker.

    Guess what that conversation became the most-watched episode of the year.

    In this episode, Stacey is back to show us how to untangle this mess.

    There’s a remarkably simple process, that looks a lot like design, to get from vague goals to meaningful measures, clear targets, and effective actions.

    It’s a method that gives you real leverage to achieve the impact you want to make.

    So if you want to learn how to put measures in place that are actually meaningful, prove your work is moving the needle, and do it with more confidence, definitely don’t miss this episode.

    What's becoming clear to me is that we’re actually really good at this. We thrive in scenarios where things are undefined. We know how to figure stuff out and iterate our way forward. So once you grasp that finding the right measurements is just another design challenge, you might actually start looking forward the process...

    Enjoy and keep making a positive impact!

    Be well

    ~ Marc


    --- [ 1. GUIDE ] ---

    00:00 Welcome to Episode 237

    03:45 Measurement's surprising popularity

    04:30 Stacey Barr on Service Design

    06:00 Breaking down the measurement puzzle

    09:00 Measuring for empowerment

    10:00 addressing the gap

    16:30 Company cultures

    22:30 Beyond shipping stuff

    23:30 The problem when starting with measures

    24:00 What does influence actually mean

    27:00 Reverse engineering the goal

    29:00 The Net Promoter Score Trap

    32:00 Measuring across silos

    34:00 Challenge of individual KPIs and quotas

    37:00 Strategies for creating paradigm shifts

    40:30 Setting meaningful targets

    45:45 Challenge of human-related data

    52:45 defining and measuring the gap

    56:45 Casuality vs correlation

    01:1:45 The patience to shift big goals

    1:03:45 The PUMP Results Map

    1:04:15 Introducing PUMP Light

    1:07:00 Where to Sign Up

    1:07:45 Discount for the program

    1:08:15 Question to ponder


    --- [ 2. LINKS ] ---


    --- [ 3. PROMO ] ---

    Use code SDS10 to get 10% off the PuMP Lite program, running November 11-13 and 25-26, 2025.


    --- [ 4. CIRCLE ] ---

    Join our private community for in-house service design professionals.

    ⁠https://servicedesignshow.com/circle


    --- [ 5. FIND THE SHOW ON ] ---

    25 September 2025, 6:00 am
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