Even though I substantially disagree with Dan that strategic design and service design are different at all. For me service design has always been strategic. Sometimes the Trojan Horse for service design is the interface, the distinct challenge of innovating or improving user or employee experiences or the value for other stakeholders within the system. But this is best case the entrance door into a major transition of strategy, structure and culture of a system. In the long run service design is not about fixing distinct problems, it is about reframing, de-contextualizing and re-contextualizing, zooming in and out – it is about challenging what the problem really is.

Dan Hill gives some valuable guidelines:

#MacGuffin: design this symbolic piece to spark and lead conversations.

#Trojan Horse: use every project to infiltrate the system with more, with change opportunities.

#The Platform: Every project has opportunities to create platforms and it should systematically make use of them.

#The Layer: Understand and utilize the different layers within organizations, fast or slow, understand these layers and use them strategically.

Dan Hill gives great food for thought and really interesting cases – mainly based on the work he did with #Sitra’s Strategic Design Unit and #Arup.

For your New Year Resolution, I strongly recommend to read or re-read #danhill “Dark Matters and Trojan Horses. A Strategic Design Vocabulary”.

I hope to see you, #danhill at the Service Design Global Conference #SDGC24 in Helsinki in October 2024.