SDN SA embraces inclusion and diversity as this brings a unique blend of skills, views, perspectives, and insights to any agent of change. We believe that this value-combination lends itself to breaking historic barriers, whilst enabling the platform we as a society in South Africa desperately need to pave the way into a better future.

Our contributions as a chapter closely align to our values of education, diversity and inclusivity. We endeavour to educate three target groups namely, a general audience of novice or aspiring Service Designers (SDs) that would like to find out what this “new” design area is all about. Then, we aim to educate current Service design practitioners on how to educate their clients and prospective clients on the benefits of SD, and why they should be implementing SD practices into their innovation and service re-imagining initiatives.

Lastly, we aim to educate corporates and government on much of the same, showing them the value that SD can bring to their organisations and our society. In these endeavours, we aim to cast our SDN net as wide as possible, reaching as many sectors and user types as we can – Driving inclusion and education of SD in SA.

Our vision:

To make an extraordinary difference to ordinary South Africans by educating our maturing market about the virtues andpositive impact of authentic Service Design, when infused into the reimagining of services in our region.

What does good Service Design look like?Service Design should drive measurable and impactful change, that not only solves a need but has either a financial number behind it or another key metric is changed. The current industry approach is “shoot first, question later”. We wouldlike service design to be about questioning first and shoot when required.

How can Service Design benefit the everyday South African on the street?In South Africa we suffer from corporates (global and local) forcing solutions onto people without understanding our uniquecontext or the real need behind it (the problem). Service Design can create better service and product delivery withcultural and context-specific solutions. Services designed in this waste will hopefully also minimise waste of all kinds i.e time, money and resources, which South Africa can ill-afford at any level.

 

Nevo Hadas
Nevo Hadas - Partner at &Innovation

I have a passion for building new revenues through service design, product development, enhancing commercialisation and business development.

Nailah Conrad
Nailah Conrad - Lecturer in Health Innovation

Lecturer in Health Innovation and Design at the University of Cape Town. Here, she guides students to innovate for health through the application of design thinking methodologies, given that the South African Health sector is in desperate need of improved services and bakes these methodologies into her practice.

Ivo Brodnik
Ivo Brodnik - Managing Director at Herzblut

Started a service design based company in South Africa in 2015. Main focus on framing, research & risk assessment and project/process implementation with Partners and Clients.

Kathryn Richards
Kathryn Richards - Design Director at Fjord

By joining customer needs with business requirements and technology viability, she creates relevant, innovative and valuable outcomes that help to transform how organisations think, act and deliver services and leading experiences to all stakeholders involved.

Roscoe Segers
Roscoe Segers - Senior Service & Interaction Designer at Fjord

Passionate service design advocate, working at at one of the only fully-fledged service design agencies in SA. Aspires to help shape a better South Africa through inspired service design.

Sivan Lapidus
Sivan Lapidus - Head of Service Design for Virtual Channels at Absa

As a designer that has never wanted to be confined to only one medium or discipline, I fell in love with the idea of experience design back when ”brand activation” became a thing. Since then, this road has led me to Service Design which is a perfect matrimony between my love of creating multimedia and multichannel experiences, and my absolute scorn for poor customer service. I currently head up the Service Design capability in Absa’s Virtual Channels space with a team of diverse and motivated people who share the same passion.

Katherine Heron
Katherine Heron - Service Design Director

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Riaan Singh
Riaan Singh - Head of Digital Client Solutions at Alexander Forbes

His role for the past five years has been centred around reprimanding and delivering exceptional customer experiences for major financial institutions, as well as embedding design thinking, design doing and design culture into the various organisations he’s worked for.