What if your most valuable users were the ones you’ve never designed for? This article explores how recognising 'future adopters' – often hidden within shared plans – can unlock transformative value. Drawing from a case study with 100 million subscribers, we reveal strategies to engage these overlooked, high-impact users.

Integrating service design and product management is more critical than ever as organisations navigate complex customer experiences and technology ecosystems. While these disciplines share the goal of delivering seamless, high-value results, they approach it differently. Service designers focus on holistic, user-centred experiences, while product managers emphasise execution, scalability and business impact. Without alignment, these differences can lead to inefficiencies, friction and missed opportunities. At the leadership level, both disciplines can be undervalued and siloed, leading to misaligned execution. At the team level, competing viewpoints – systems thinking versus Agile execution – create unnecessary friction.

In this interview, Touchpoint Editor-in-Chief Jesse Grimes speaks with Luis Alt, a founder of the Livework studio in São Paulo, a pioneer in service design in South America and a longtime member of the SDN Award jury. As he steps away from his Head of Jury role, he reflects on the value of the Award for the service design community.

In-house service design teams encounter the challenge of navigating internal boundaries and bridging fragmented parts of the organisational system. This article presents a conceptual framework to explain how these teams can create the necessary conditions for boundary permeability, a critical factor for their success.

The reality of working in-house as a service designer is that most people the designer must work closely with don’t know what service design is. We need practical tactics to survive and thrive in environments where engagements with us perhaps do not come naturally. A powerful self-introduction with colleagues is one such tactic.

Profile Interview –– Lea Sevšek | Jesse Grimes

Most of my professional life has been spent working outside client organisations. Earlier on in my career, I worked in design studios and later in design agencies and consultancies. Working from the outside had a certain edge to it. About a decade ago, I began contracting, moving frequently between organisations, both through consultancies and in direct engagements.

In-house service designers operate as integral parts of their respective organisations, carrying a deep understanding of their cultures, processes and long-term goals, and enabling them to craft appropriate solutions.

In-house service design teams have the great advantage of being placed with all other moving parts of the organisation. Each project becomes an opportunity to change the organisation and to influence how they think and work (Blomkvist, 2015).

It is inspiring to see public institutions embracing service design. However, for those within less mature organisations, such examples may feel distant or difficult to apply. This article aims to support and empower service design champions in organisations which are just beginning their service design journey.

Building a service design team from scratch is a rare privilege which can also be seen as a daunting prospect. This article talks about the lessons learnt in undertaking this challenge at an organisation that was completely unfamiliar with design and research and describes the conditions which allowed the team to be established and flourish.

Much of the common design discourse is centred on improving our craft with time often disproportionately invested in polishing our processes and outputs. Yet, in the context of continuous organisational change, is this enough to achieve outcomes for our customers, colleagues and communities?

Embarking on a career as an in-house service designer is both exciting and challenging. It’s not just about creating aesthetically pleasing touchpoints, but about integrating holistic design solutions into the corporate ecosystem.

“What is often lacking is not creativity…but putting ideas to work.” — Theodore Levitt.

‘The Circle’ is an international community of in-house service design professionals meeting monthly to share, commiserate and learn.

In-house service design teams can support larger organisations to be responsive to changing customer expectations and technological advancements. There is extensive tacit knowledge unique to both establishing an in-house service design team and iterating its practices so that its work is valued and impactful.