▶️ What's the invisible role of the service designer within an organization?

My two cents

The role of the service designer is in some ways to help relax the organization so that people don't have to fear saying something, what some call psychological safety.

Psychological safety is this idea that you are allowed to say something which might be stupid, which you're unsure of which might be critical, and you know that you won't lose your job.People will not make fun at you directly or indirectly, and you will be in a safe place. So no harm will happen if you speak up. Mm-hmm.

The best ways I find to create that is by:

being the example,
having a few ground rules to play together
having mechanisms that help people speak up

Invisible role 1: Being an example

so showing that I can disagree in a very positive way, say, oh, that's an opinion. I personally have this opinion.

And that's a way of showing, Hey, we can't disagree. It's okay. Or saying stuff like, hmm. Excuse me, I I didn't understand that term. Can you explain it? Kpi? Ah, that's key Performance indicator. Okay. This is a little bit fuzzy for me. Could you give me an example? Ah, okay.

Basically a number to measure if we are good doing right. Ah, okay, now I got it. Thank you so much.

Invisible role 1: Helping design rules to work together in the organization

The second part will be to have a few ground rules to play.

You know, like kids do this thing that works really well.

Whenever they meet, they do stuff like, okay, you play bad cop, you play good cop, and I'm the prisoner, and if I'm on the stone, you can't catch me. And then they play four hours. And sometimes these ground rules kind of help.

Invisible role 3: Creating mechanisms that help people speak up

We need to help create mechanisms to speak up, so that people have a way to say things in a maybe more indirect way,

For example, instead of saying, "shut up this is not a topic for now" being able to say, "Hmm, I wonder if this will be a topic that we could put in the parking?". It means basically the same thing, but the second one ensures that the the person will really say it.

Practical tools that help

I created a set of cards to help do that in workshops. These psychological safety cards are a mix of these rules to play and these mechanisms that help to say difficult things in a more gentle way.

These are rules that I've developed over the years. I use them as introduction parts in the start of my workshops.

Depending on the meeting and the types of people, I don't use them all. I might use other elements, but some of the elements come always back.

For example, often use at the start of workshops with people that I don't know I say:

"This is a workshop that I do with specific methods, some parts might be new to you and therefore it's normal, if it tickles you sometimes. As long as it tickles, it's okay. That's means that you are a bit uncomfortable because it's new. But whenever it hurts, please tell me and will find ways to make you more comfortable."

Service Design Questions and Answers