Daniele: Hey, Arun, such a pleasure to see you again today.
Arun: Hello, Daniele. It's a pleasure meeting you. I'm looking forward to the conversation.
The book launch party
Daniele: It's such a pleasure because you've been part of the book launch party that happened just a few weeks before this call. I know that you are a service design nerd and a fellow book lover. So I'm very interested to know more about all of that with you.
Arun: Thank you, Daniele. It is first of all, I wanted to thank you for inviting me to the launch of the book club.
It was an amazing opportunity to be paired with amazing service design practitioners and leaders. So thank you for the opportunity. And I know we have few things in common, right? Our love of books. We also help the community in whatever way we can grow. And it's also just wanted to call out your amazing work that you're doing for the service design community.
You are one person who puts the backstage front stage, you share all your inner decision making and all your backstage activities so transparent, really appreciate that and thank you once again. Now, so with that, I will get started.
Meet Arun
Arun: So I'm Arun Joseph, a service designer based in Toronto.
I was a service designer at IBM, its mainframe business organization. In fact, I was the first service designer there. I led three service design pilot projects, helping three product teams create new digital touch points to help their clients quickly discover and learn new product features leading to faster product adoption.
I left IBM in September of 2023. Currently, I'm in a sabbatical, doing some local traveling, learning some new things. And yeah, that's where I am right now.
The value of a sabbatical
Daniele: And this brings me to my first question, because I know we've been talking about that in private which is the value of doing a sabbatical, how did you came to the decision of doing a sabbatical and what's the idea behind
Arun: it? Sure. And so as the pilot projects, when we're nearing to its end, I felt that, okay it's time to take a small break from work. When I say break from work I meant, okay, let's do some sort of local travel, broaden my mind meet new people, learn new things.
And I felt that sabbatical was the best place for me to explore. When I left IBM, I didn't have a structure as to how my sabbatical would look. I explored a few local places in Toronto and in Ontario. I learned a little bit about systems thinking. So all those things just it just came in the moment, so there was no planning per se, and that sabbatical also really helped me to focus on my health.
I was able to reach out to a few other people for coffee chats, so I think it was a combination of a little bit of that freedom from work that would summarize my sabbatical.
Daniele: Super interesting how you know, you go into a sabbatical free, without a master plan, we always have this ideas of holidays we need to check the boxes of Oh, I'm going to see the Eiffel tower.
I'm going to go in this bakery. I'm going to do this and this and this. And like this mindset of we need times where, where we don't plan, where we let life happen and means that it can be just meeting someone can be, Oh, I discovered a passion for system thinking or a passion for gardening.
And and that's okay too. Is this something that is new to you? Is it like a practice that you've grown into? Or is it something that you already had in the past and that you have already practiced in the past?
Arun: I would say this is my second sabbatical in the sense I took my first sabbatical a decade ago.
When I was just transitioning into user research, and that was a little more of a shorter sabbatical, if you will. I was in India during that time. So during that time, I didn't explore too much in terms of travel. I was at home. I was reading, learning. I was connecting with people. Yeah. So I would say This is not new to me, but this is the first time I'm doing it outside India, so it's a little bit of a new experience, and I think, with every year we get influenced by new perspectives and new experiences so this sabbatical has been very special to me in the sense uh, I love traveling and I made sure that, each time when I travel, I come up with new perspectives that really helps me to broaden my thinking.
How to prepare a sabbatical
Daniele: And I'm curious. What's, would you recommend that, to our fellow friends who are service designers, working in this kind of fast paced environment, often service design can be quite intensive, both emotionally, but also in terms of work is this something that you would say, Hey think about it and if yes, if you would recommend it, what's your framework or way of thinking about when is a good time to go in a sabbatical?
Arun: Great question, Daniele. So I would say maybe the first thing the service designers ought to think is, are they in the proper mindset to take a sabbatical, right? If they have their family, if they have other priorities, taking a sabbatical might not be might not be the best way. But what I would suggest is, if they are planning to start, if they would like to do a sabbatical, maybe they can start small maybe on a weekend, can they detach themselves from their work and then travel to a local neighborhood or a new place in the city without depending too much on Google Maps, right?
The value of having no plan moments
Arun: Can they travel without making too much of a plan, get happy on being lost, and then come back with this new feeling that, yes, I can live with uncertainty. And once they feel that they can do it on weekends or long weekends, maybe, can they speak to their manager and say, Hey, every quarter I would like to take three or four days off to be off.
to be in a place which is off the grid. Maybe that will slowly build that confidence and then hopefully at some point of time they feel that, oh, okay, maybe I'm ready for a short adventure.
Daniele: It's inspiring to see how you know, as a generation, we have to learn to live without plans, that's and we need to grow into it, saying, Oh, I'm just going to do a one weekend without a plan, one weekend without a digital companion that can guide me.
It's quite interesting that as people, our job is often, to plan the interactions that happen between humans and organizations. We have a bias towards planning, organizing, but not so much on the living, experiencing, and that in some way, a tiny sabbatical, a break could be just a moment just to be the human who benefits of a service, who enjoys an experience instead of being the analytical or the planner of that experience.
Arun: Yes, definitely. And I would encourage service designers not to design their sabbatical, just enjoy sabbatical.
Daniele: I think that's going to be a key phrase here. That sometimes we should stop to design and just to enjoy. Yes. Yes. And I'm also curious about a bit your journey, because I know
Arun's journey to Service Design
Daniele: So, you have had a very interesting journey up until you discovered service design and you also wrote at length about it.
Could you maybe just give us a few pointers of so I heard there was UX, there was service design, there is a sabbatical now how did all this journey happen?
Arun: Sure. I moved to Canada in 2018. And then I joined IBM as a design researcher. And during my design research, I was really fascinated by the backstage side of things.
The internal processes, tools internal employee experiences, etc. So that gave me the motivation to pursue Service Design and then the pandemic came. I was not really sure how to go about my transition. So luckily I was able to reach out to a few senior people in IBM's design leadership
Daniele: who
Arun: provided the necessary mentoring, to come out of my comfort zone of me being an introvert, just not really good at public speaking or facilitation.
So with their guidance, and I was able to engage in activities that really improved my confidence in public speaking, facilitation, and I also had a discussion with the design executive of the business department and eventually I was able to make the transition to service design at the start of January 2022.
Daniele: So we are both introverts. I love it. It's interesting to see how many of the introverts, are pushing a lot of the community stuff which for me sounds sometimes a bit weird, it's the introverts pushing for the community building for this stuff.
The Service Design Book Club
Daniele: Because there is one great thing that you're part of, which I'd love if we can I get a bit zoomed in, is the Service Design Book Club. And how an introvert, so that's basically the question is, why the fuck would an introvert, be part of something like, creating a service design book club where you have to be with a lot of people and what is this all about?
Arun: Sure. In fact, the motivation for me to start the book club was a little interesting in the sense It was way back in 2018, when I joined IBM as a design researcher, I felt that I wanted to transition to service design, but then I was totally new to service design. So I thought, okay, maybe why can't I organize a service design book club?
At that time, it was known as Service Design, Service Design Toronto Book Club. It was under The mentorship of Linn Vizard, whom you have already interviewed. So Haley Anderson from Toronto and I met and we decided, okay, let's create a in person book club where we invite the author of a service design book to join us remotely.
And then, we rent a space in downtown Toronto and have a few people join us and hopefully there's going to be a lot of sharing of knowledge between the author and the participants. And, hopefully, that would improve my knowledge in service design. So I would say that was .
the premise behind the creation of the book club. Starting from 2018 December all the way till March 2020, we met in person in downtown Toronto, where we had the authors or the guest speakers joining us remotely. Then we took a break, and then in starting from 2021, we decided to pivot and went online and in terms of my introversion, definitely yes.
The first couple of events, I did struggle a little bit. The reason was like, we used to have around 15 to 20 event, 15 to 20 attendees join us. So I was like, okay, maybe, I can introduce I'm the guest speaker, and then probably have someone else take care of the logistics. So luckily for the first event, I had Haley Anderson, my co founder.
And then starting from the second event, I had Elena, an amazing co facilitator, who is a better facilitator than me. And we had other volunteers as well, but Elena used to facilitate that event. And so in that way what happened was I made sure that I was delegating the responsibility to a more qualified person than me doing the actual work of running the book club event, which could, which was a little overwhelming for me, but once we pivoted to online, it was a little more easier.
But even then today, I just introduce a guest speaker and then I let Elena and we have a new co facilitator Alena as well, they do their magic here.
Daniele: Ah, I love it. And. I love it because when I see the author lists, and the books that you cover, it's not just pure service design, which is one thing that I love, it's, I see it, as a book club, which is about books that can help service designers rather than a book club.
of books by service designers for service designers, which could be a bit limited sometimes, and with so also with selections of books that might be a bit more provocative or might add a little bit of a different perspective, that the world doesn't stop in the box of service design.
So that's a very cool community that you're helping to shape there. And I'm extremely thankful. That's, that you're
Arun: doing that. Thank you so much.
Maturity of Service Design in Canada
Daniele: As someone who is both native to Canada and India, a citizen of the world, if we can say it like that. How is your take on the maturity of service design in these different countries?
How do you see also maybe the maturity of service design in also these big organizations, like IBM what's your take on that?
Arun: Sure. So maybe I will start with my take on the maturity of service design in Canada. So this is coming from my perspective.
Different practitioners or different service design leaders could have different thoughts, so with that disclaimer, I would say that service design is slowly gaining traction in Canada in certain provinces like Ontario. Alberta, Vancouver, and the focus of service designers is to improve the experiences of digital touchpoints.
So definitely there's this overlap between the UX and the service design component there, so in in terms of organizations, I think a lot of financial institutions have embedded service design teams. Sometimes they don't go by the titles of service designers. They could come under customer experience or they could come under the innovation or the strategy teams, so that's my, a little bit of that broad take in terms of service design maturity in Canada. I think Vancouver, they have their own service design community. I think in Toronto, I think we have service design leaders like Linn Patrick, Chris, Markus, and Chad. So they've all been members of the Service Design Canada
Network Association, and they have contributed heavily to the Service Design Global Conference, and also, I think they also hosted Service Design Canada Conference as well. So I think the service design is in a very good, I wouldn't say very good space. It's really growing. I think when it comes to adoption of service design in enterprises like IBM,
I think there are a lot of opportunities for the practice to grow. And I think when I was at IBM, my peers were running the Service Design Guild over there. So they were doing a lot of initiatives to showcase the business value of service design. And I'm assuming that they're doing it
good job there. In terms of the take around the maturity of service design in India, frankly, I do not have much connections with service designers in India. Recently, I've connected with a few service designers in Bangalore, such as Juneza, I think, who has been a part of your book chapter tour. So I think compared to Canada, service design is still at a very nascent stage.
The reason being, probably, what does service design mean? That, the answer to that question is probably not very clear. In that Indian context, they still think that service design is still UX centric in some way. I'm hoping that. The practitioners in India would take steps to reframe that.
And hopefully we see an uptick of service design practitioners in India.
Learn from neighboor regions
Daniele: It's a good reminder that you're giving us, which is that, often people say, Oh, in my country as a whole, the maturity is so such and such. And you're saying something extremely important here, which is there is a difference between
regions, there are regions where there is more maturity or growth for services. I know there are regions where there is less, and instead of trying to look at the whole country and saying, okay, Switzerland or Canada or India, it's like that. Maybe just. Boiling it down to a country, to a region, a city, and saying, hey, is there a community in a city?
And maybe being already happy that there is a city with a great community and being part of that. And often, a city is not so far away. In Canada, it's a bit longer. Usually the distance is that what we have in Switzerland, obviously but also this possibility to say, Hey, we have a neighbor there who's very knowledgeable and maybe let's start with that.
And that's already great. Instead of being sad that in the country in general that the level isn't as high as we would hope. I love how you reframe that in I say it's not so much about the country. It's more about the cities, the people, and the regions.
Arun: Yeah, I love your metaphor of countries as neighbors, It is like maybe, someone is in Switzerland or in France, and maybe both the countries could have different levels of service design maturity.
But if you start looking at the entire globe as a interconnected neighborhood, then you can say that, Hey, okay, I have a problem. Maybe I can just reach out to my neighbor who lives in France or in Germany. And then you can just sort out the problem. So yeah, I love that.
I love your use of metaphor there.
Daniele: And it's stuff that many people are doing, I'm seeing that with the Service Design Network Switzerland, where most of the people who joined the events are not from Switzerland. They are from Pakistan, from India, from Canada, from the UK, but still, what's interesting for us Swiss people, is also mostly interesting for them just because at the end of the day, we are all humans, and so most of what defines us is basically the same.
And then there is like a 2 percent of cultural difference which can be very interesting where even if it's not your culture, you're like, Oh, that's interesting and can bring you a bit of a different view. So I'd highly recommend to people to not only join, events and and stuff that is
local or regional or from their country, but, have a look at what's done in Canada, if you're from Switzerland, or what people do in Indonesia, you're going to learn so much more just because you will see a different culture, but also you will just also see that the problems are the same everywhere.
And that's reassuring, and I often get this feeling that. And once we see that the neighbor has the same problem with the grass, our grass starts to become a little more green than what we thought before.
Arun: Totally agree on that. Yeah, the grass is always greener on the side and maybe someone should just take a sabbatical and explore and come back.
Absolutely.
Daniele: Absolutely. There would be so much more, obviously, to explore about you, your life, your passions but we have limited time.
## The good stuff
Daniele: I will jump in the next chapter of our conversation, which is your review of the chapter, how to make people smile with no money from the book Service Design Principles 301 to 400.
And I'd like to ask the first question, which is, was there anything in that chapter that resonated
Arun: with you? Definitely. In fact, I have two stories to share before that, before I get into those to share as two stories. I just wanted to first thank you Daniele for making the content so easy to read and understand, the examples were
so easy to understand, though I've never been to Switzerland, the, the examples that you listed, it was so easy, so thank you so much for creating that very user friendly content to understand. The second, what I really liked was the examples that you listed under each principle, they were just very simple interactions where the focus was either on improving the content or the support experience.
And I felt that even though they were very simple, these interactions we often overlook in our busy life. I just wanted to, thank you for calling that out. That minimal content, even the most minimalistic content and the support interactions really, make a huge presence in our life.
In fact, that has deepened my appreciation for the content touchpoints. In fact, I wanted to share a story. As you're aware, I'm currently in India for my vacation. And I was supposed to return to Toronto in February, but then I decided to, reschedule or I wanted to reschedule my return trip to Toronto to next month.
So I just wanted to, share my experience around how I went about rescheduling my airline ticket and how by reading your principles around content and support touchpoints, I was a little more aware of how could have the airlines made my life more easier. So just to give you the context, I had booked my return to Toronto through a Middle Eastern Airlines.
So I wanted to reschedule, so I went, checked my email and I was looking for this call center number. to reschedule. And I looked my mail, I looked up my email, I looked up my ticket, and I couldn't find the number. So I had to go to the website, and there I had to spend almost one or two minutes to get to my call center number.
And then I dialed up, or I called the customer support number, and I had to wait for a few minutes, and then, I was speaking to a call center person. And the first question the call center person asked me was, Okay, Arun, thank you for validating your information.
Were you not able to do this rescheduling online on the airline's website? I knew that was not possible because I had booked economy class and that category of ticket was something which I couldn't do it online. I responded that I tried doing it online but I was not able to do it. I expected the call center agent to ask me, okay, why was this not possible?
Instead, immediately what the call center agent said was, okay, that's not a problem. I will do it online for you, and you're good to go. For me, this was a clear example of the call center system not talking to the website IT system. There was a little bit of a problem of a disconnection between these two systems.
Finally, the call center person was able to reschedule my ticket. I didn't spend too much time waiting there. Daniele, after reading your book, after reading your book and especially the principles, I realized that I was looking for two information, two pieces of information. One, the support number on my ticket and second, like a message saying that this type of ticket, for this type of ticket, the rescheduling is not possible online and I have to call the support number.
I was wondering like, if those two pieces of information was there in the email, it would have saved my life. I wouldn't say saved my life, it would have made my life a little more easier. So that awareness of how important this content and the support touchpoints are, I think that comes, that came from after reading your principles.
So thank you so much.
Daniele: Yeah, it's we have a sentence in French, which is the devil is in the details. And and I feel your story really shows that, that there are such simple things content wise that can make a huge difference, both for, the front stage, the person experiencing the thing.
And also the backstage, the guy who has to manage the people who are frustrated, because if the information came at the right moment on the right location, then they would not even need, a long call, the call could be shorter or even non existent. And and these small interactions are definitely extremely
Arun: important, yeah.
Simplicity hides complexity
Arun: And Daniele, you did mention about backstage, so I just want to add a couple of thoughts around that. By reading your principles in the book, I have been able to get a deeper appreciation of how this low touch front stage touchpoints mask the complexity of the backstage. I'll give you an example to share this too.
Principle No. 354 in your book, it talks about, Daniele, you being on a London subway and you are seeing a poster. It was more like a workaround poster saying that okay, this is an short workaround to a problem. And I was just thinking that the front stage
touch point is that poster, but if you were to imagine the backstage complexity, imagine how many teams were involved in the creation and the planning of that specific information that went into the poster, or imagine the number of employees that were trained to address questions by the rail commuters if they didn't have an opportunity to look at the poster on that specific day, or how do people, how did that subway or that team measure the success of that poster, so all this what if questions, that emerged for me in the backstage was as a result of just looking in detail the low touch front stage touch point that you had shared in Principle 354. So just wanted to thank you for showing a light around there.
Daniele: My pleasure.
## The 1x10 cost of new interactions
Daniele: And it's interesting that you're talking about, the, the load, of simplicity, something that is very simple in the front stage, what's visible for the person going through an interaction is quite simple, but what happens in the backstage, what employees and partners have to do can be much more complex.
And these days I've been reflecting on that for my own website and service which is the Swiss Innovation Academy. I've noticed one thing where, you know, every time I'm adding something to it, I'm adding a piece of complexity, because not so much for the user, because I think the user often is like, Oh, new content from Daniele, so great, cool, I can find it, at least that's what I think in my head, they will think, because I'm an optimist. But for me, the problem is that then it's a thing to manage, it's an additional touch point that I should not forget, that I have to take into account and I've noticed over the years that when I started this journey, I was like, Oh, let's create
this, and now as slowly I see these things breaking, because, time and Internet dreadlings and stuff, I slowly noticed Oh shit, I created maybe too many of them because now there is a lot of backstage work, to keep all of this working, syncing, and and I think this is really something that's, that I noticed so deeply with a bit age and experience that, the cost of everything that you add in the front stage is twice.
5th time 10 times bigger on the backstage and that when we as service designers say, yeah, we're going to just do a poster, it's yeah, who's going to be trained? Who will print it? Do we have a printer? Legally or do we want to do that because we have a carbon footprint thing that we want to respect?
Sustainability wise what type of paper do we use, there are so many questions, so it's quite interesting to say that, to see that these tiny things, if you see their true complexity, it's quite huge.
Minimalism and Service Design
Arun: Definitely, Daniele. And in fact, I remember reading this somewhere, I think as designers, we like to add things, but then we find it very difficult to subtract things.
And that is where, like that the spirit of minimalism comes in, it's not easy. Even to, subtract or even divide or multiply. I'm just throwing out some phrases here. But the key is we always like to go up to the next level. So we'd like to add new things. And if someone says that you have to take this out, maybe then probably that loss aversion bias kicks in and says, no, we don't want to lose anything.
So let's keep adding.
Daniele: And I see that as a very good critique, to not just service designers in general, but also about that book, because that book could be seen as, a push to add more stuff, Oh, just add this interaction, just add this and this and this and this and this and this and this, which if you would do all the 100 things, I think you will be totally overwhelmed.
You didn't need two sabbaticals or even more. But I think it's like the question, should we really add it, and if we add it, this is always a question that I asked back in the days I worked in a local church where resources were super limited, and, but people always had, an activist mindset.
So there was always something new to do, someone new to help and something new to do. And we always said if we add something, we need to subtract something, at least so that we stay at the same level, and I think that will be a very good criticism for that book, is if you read that book, read it with the mindset of if you add something, if you use something from that book, you should at least remove something, because otherwise you're going to just overwhelm yourself.
The people in the backstage.
Arun: Yes. And in enterprise organizations, they always like to ship new features every quarter. On one side, they have probably they have only limited visibility in terms of how many customers are using the current features. But despite that, they like to create new features and ship it because they want to be seen as a number one or number two in the world or, they want to be better than competitors.
And that's where, as you mentioned, they don't want to, they are not in a position to subtract. It's more about adding. And as you rightly mentioned in the church example, Yes, activities activists, they always want to do something, create that change. But the question is the environment ready for that?
So that's where, as you said, the addition and the subtraction has to be equal. Otherwise, it's going to be imbalance.
Daniele: And may I ask, do you have advice pieces of advice to help service designers to go more in this Minimalist mindset, of being more a subtractor of complexity than an creator of additional stuff.
Arun: Great question. I didn't foresee that question coming, but what I can quickly say is maybe service designers could. approach the experimental mindset. So let's say that, I have added three things, and now I would like to add the fourth thing. So maybe can I run an experiment which says that okay, I'm going to add the fourth thing, but I, might even remove the first or the second thing, and then see how does that system or the product or the experience
plays out. So you run experiments, you run your hypothesis. In that way, you can constantly see that, okay, if I'm adding certain things, if I, what would happen to the system if I were to remove or subtract it. So I think in that way, Service designers are good at prototyping, so it's, it is playing into their core skill, experimentation, prototyping, seeing and learning, and then iterating through that feedback loops.
Daniele: Thanks for that advice, I think that's going to be very useful. So what's an additional critique you would have for that chapter? So we had one first critique, which is about the book in general, which Don't take it as a additionalist mindset, but more as a minimalist mindset, which is there, these are suggestions.
And if you take it, you have a you have a kind of a responsibility to also remove something.
The bad stuff: not all problems are the same
Daniele: What's another critique that you would add to, to improve our understanding of that book.
Arun: Sure. I wouldn't say this is, I wouldn't say this from a critique's perspective. It is more about like just broadening the perspective.
So the the principles 354 to 363, they come under the theme frustration. Now every human being gets frustrated. Now there is a difference between human beings getting frustrated, and there's a difference between human beings getting frustrated and taking action. And most human beings, they are in a state of inertia if the frustration really does not concern them.
If the problem is not really relevant to them, they're like, why should I be bothered? I have other million things to take care of. So perhaps, Can we nudge the reader to be a little more self aware of the problem and whether they can solve that problem either independently or through teams? So just to give an example, maybe let's say someone is facing a problem or they are getting frustrated.
Maybe they can ask this question how important is this problem for me if I solve this problem? And the other question is, what will I lose if I don't solve this problem, right? So it's more like a spectrum, right? So if they say, oh, okay, if I don't stand to gain nothing, then, it's like they are a little more self conscious that, okay, this problem really does not affect them.
And even if they get frustrated, they see that there is no value thinking too much about the problem. Now, assuming that this reader says, okay, this problem is very important for me to solve, the next step they could look at is they could just draw a graph, like an x axis and a y axis, right? On the x axis, they could have, okay, what is the frequency of this occurrence of this problem?
Is it one time, multiple times? And then on the y axis what time, how much time do they need to solve the problem? One minute, five minutes, a week, a year, whatever. Once they plot that dimension, it becomes a little more easier for them to step back and say, Ok, to solve this problem, it may take a year, this is a complex problem, I might require a team.
So there is no use of thinking too much about the problem right now, let me focus on other things, so it's more like a small framework, this is not my framework, so I've just reviewed some blog articles around management consulting and that's how I came to know about it, yeah. So the short summary is helping the reader to gain a little more self awareness of how that problem is impacting them would probably give them that
better direction in terms of whether to really focus on the problem right now or not focus on it and help them continue with their life.
Daniele: It's super inspiring to see that, we need a framework or a way to reflect about which problems do we solve. And that there is, again, in a service design mindset, there is not just the analysis.
It's not just a case of what's the impact for the person being served, but also what's the impact for the person serving. And we have to take into account both aspects. And we, in a perfect world, obviously, all problems will be super easy to solve and won't create much problems. And people will be super happy that they will be solved.
But in reality, it's much different. And, back in the days, we reflected on that with my friend Romain Pitet, who is a storyteller. And he had a kind of an interesting take on that, where he said, there are problems which you should leave into a service, because they make the service.
They create the identity of the service. They give an opportunity to people to meet, and then we had a kind of a whole philosophical question, Yeah, but isn't that kind of like manipulation, leaving problems just so that interaction can happen and stuff. And then we came up with this reflection that if, and that's where the backstage comes in.
If to solve that tiny problem, which isn't creating a huge issue for the person, but needs a five second interaction with a frontline worker to be solved, but will take two years, of engineering to be solved, then it's a smart problem to live in the service, and to make it something else, to create around it an opportunity for interaction, which I found interesting, That not all problems
need to be solved. And we can't solve every problem. And so we can't be strategic about it. Like engineer, plotting on a graph, but also a storyteller who says, which is the problem that creates a great story, a great interaction. And which one should we keep?
These are all very interesting questions to look at problems and frustrations in a more
Arun: analytical way. In fact, Daniele, I should thank you for giving me this new perspective.
Earlier, I was thinking that, okay, problems of all sizes have to be solved, either individually or as a team or as an organization or a department. But now you bring this interesting perspective, which says that, hey, problems are an invitation to be embedded in service. And I thought That is an amazing way of looking at a service designer's role, right?
A service designer's role is a connector with different teams, bringing them together to solve problems of various sizes. So rather than me as a service designer going individual and trying to solve the problem through systems thinking, journey mapping, service blueprinting, can I just bring different teams into that space and say, hey, this problem is eagerly waiting for your knowledge.
And me as a service designer, I just need to take a step back and then maybe just gently guide them. And I'm sure, they can solve the problems. In fact, I just wanted to share that recently I came across this article, I don't remember the link, but I will share it with you, which talks about the five types of problem solving profiles.
The five types of problem solvers
Arun: There are five types of problem solving personas or profiles. The one, the first one is thinker, which means that this person takes his own time for decision making. The second is detective, which means that this person uses data to solve problems. The third is an adventurer, so this type of thinker moves fast and efficient.
The fourth type of thinker is listener, who listens, who is more of a community builder. And the fifth is a visionary, which means that this person really thinks big picture. So the insight that I drew from there is as service designers, maybe we should do a little bit of that self awareness in terms of What is our problem solving profile?
And then reach out to our stakeholders and say, hey, which is your problem solving profile? And then, look at ways to align. So in that way, we get a sense of, okay, this is how our stakeholders solve the problems and how we can help them on their journey.
Diversity in problem solving
Daniele: It makes me think of the, De Bono thinking hats.
It's a bit different, but it's, and I think that's what I like about that. It's like the saying that problem solving also needs different hats, yeah. And that we could add a little bit of diversity also in that way of thinking.
Say, hey, if in a team we have only problem solvers type one. Could we get a bit more type 2, type 3, type 4, and type 5 people sometimes, because it would mean that we would solve problems maybe in a more complete way, or saying, hey, for that type of problem, maybe we need problem solver type 2, and you're a type 1, so we're going to look for someone else.
So that's a very cool way of seeing it.
Definitely, and that's where, diverse teams are more confident or, they solve complex problems more quickly than, teams who have just one type of personality and limited toolkit in solving problems.
Do service designer have a savior syndrome?
Daniele: As a conclusion to that reflection, I would say that there is something in, in that much, what we are exploring here, which is a bit of a call to action or reminder that we're giving to ourselves, which is as service designer, we should not play too much with our savior syndrome, trying to save everybody, fix every problem, and sometimes,
just say, hey is there somebody else who would, be better at solving it? Do we really need to solve it? Is it a good problem in the sense that, it creates a time for reflection for people? Is it a problem that helps people, sometimes we need things that don't go too fast, we need to let people have a bit of friction, and a bit of frustration.
Is it a positive frustration? Yeah, I think that's reminding us to not be in this godlike figure of wanting to fix everything, but also thinking, do we have a right to fix it? Is it right to fix it? And, and what's the cost of fixing it, and what's the impact of fixing it?
I think these are all very deep questions that we can take with us tonight.
Arun: Thank you so much. Daniele, if I can add one more thought, I like your idea of service designers, not being the lone hero to save or solve the problem. In fact, I was just thinking maybe service designers should just walk away from the problem or even take a sabbatical from that problem and then let others solve it.
I know, not everything can be, not every problem needs to be solved by a service designer. At the end of the day, certain problems are meant for certain roles and disciplines. But sometimes as service designers, we feel that, okay, we have the tools and the toolkits, so every problem is a service design problem and only we can solve it.
So thank you for sharing that perspective.
Daniele: There is a great anecdote, do you know how Napoleon handled his mail, his physical mail? It's really funny. In times of war, you would imagine that a general would like to get his mail very fast, to answer very fast. And his rule was something like, so I don't, will not get the number right, but the idea, I can express it back.
So the rule was something like, he would wait a few days. for each letter before opening it and answering it because he knew that people would then solve the most of the problems by themselves and the problems which would remain will be the problems that really need him. That's a kind of an interesting framework.
How do we translate that in business? No idea. But but it's a kind of an interesting provocation from a little guy from France.
Arun: Very cool idea. And I think Napoleon was very smart. Yeah. Amazing. Thank you for
Daniele: sharing. And you shared a lot today. Thank you for that. And you shared a lot with the community.
You always share a lot with the community.
Call to action: join the service design book club
Daniele: I'd like to ask, what's something that the community can do for you?
Arun: Great question, Daniele. As you know that I run a book club. And we have the next online book club. event happening on March 14th, Thursday at 12 p. m. Eastern, so we have Dave Gray who is an amazing person who's written the Gamestorming book he's the author of Liminal Thinking.
We are inviting him to share his thoughts on Liminal Thinking. It would be great if you, if your calendar allows, please join us. We'll open our registrations in the first week. It's free and anyone around the world can join us. And yeah, for the rest of the year, we have four more events lined up. And Daniele, I think you will be joining us for the November 14th event.
Daniele: Absolutely. Go join the Service Design Book Club it's highly recommended.
Closing words
Arun: Thank you Daniele for once again for the opportunity and it was a pleasure
Daniele: talking to you.
Thanks to you. We went deep in stuff where I feel it changes the way I'm thinking. And I'm very thankful to you for helping me think in a more profound way.
Thank you so much.
Arun: Thank you so much, Daniele. It was a pleasure. Have a lovely
Daniele: evening. Bye bye. Bye bye.