Summary
Our panelists discuss the day's conference sessions. Moderated by Patrick Quattlebaum
Key Insights
-
•
Service designers must embed within organizations, shifting from external consultants to integral team members to enable real change.
-
•
Trust is foundational yet often unspoken in successful service design engagement and collaboration.
-
•
Facilitation skills are core to service design work, often more critical than craft or visual aesthetics.
-
•
Complex systems require embracing messiness and continuous probing rather than seeking fixed, linear solutions.
-
•
Service design’s unique value lies in orchestrating experiences by connecting organizational dots, not just user touchpoints.
-
•
Multiple disciplines see themselves as 'dot connectors' but service design’s orchestration focuses on experience and ecosystem perspectives.
-
•
Language and jargon can create barriers; transparent communication and co-creating shared vocabulary help inclusion.
-
•
Leadership in service design transcends titles; influence grows through relationships, care, and knowledge over time.
-
•
Reframing problems from stakeholders’ perspectives and testing assumptions collaboratively drives better engagement and outcomes.
-
•
The interplay between formal organizational structures, informal networks, and value flows shapes design opportunities and challenges.
Notable Quotes
"Gina was closing the dots and shifting perspective from a designer closer to the business."
"People appreciate when you acknowledge your limitations in blending into an organization."
"Design will never be able to stay static; it is how you show up responding to probing the system daily."
"If you want to bring dots closer together, you have to constantly notice how things change in the moment."
"Leadership is unlocking potential in people and processes and taking responsibility for doing that."
"We come in like water—hanging out, listening, figuring out where the blood flow is in the environment."
"Sometimes you have to make something wrong on purpose to learn and improve it with others’ help."
"Connecting dots goes beyond just linking user experience; it’s about engagement with the organizational system."
"Trust, facilitation, change, and complexity—if you wrap your mind around those, you’ll get reasonably far."
"Often we designers are in IT departments, separate from the larger organization; that boundary is a hurdle to overcome."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"If designers spend more time talking about titles than their work, we’re just gazing into our navels."
Adam Cutler Karen Pascoe Ian Swinson Susan WorthmanDiscussion
June 8, 2016
"We don’t get upset when users say one thing and do another, but we freak out when our leadership behaves that way."
Peter MerholzThe Trials and Tribulations of Directors of UX (Videoconference)
July 13, 2023
"Everything that has been put online, someone like us made and put there; we bake our own biases into it."
Lisa WelchmanCleaning Up Our Mess: Digital Governance for Designers
June 14, 2018
"Green spaces in cities can greatly enhance our quality of life and resilience."
Vincent BrathwaiteOpener: Past, Present, and Future—Closing the Racial Divide in Design Teams
October 22, 2020
"If you forget the individual, you cut out psychological safety, and that’s the foundation of strong teams."
Brenna FallonLearning Over Outcomes
October 24, 2019
"Factory owners manipulated people’s time so much that workers were afraid to carry a watch."
Tricia WangSpatial Collapse: Designing for Emergent Culture
January 8, 2024
"We aimed for research that is actionable, not just insightful or pretty to look at."
Edgar Anzaldua MorenoUsing Research to Determine Unique Value Proposition
March 11, 2021
"Successful operations must have a well-laid-out and transparent process and documentation, but that process must become invisible in its application."
Designing Systems at Scale
November 7, 2018
"If my experiment made front-page news tomorrow, what would the headline be? Would my mother be proud?"
Erin WeigelGet Your Whole Team Testing to Design for Impact
July 24, 2024
