SDN Team
Author - SDN Team

We asked leading practitioners giving talks and workshops at the Service Design Global Conference to answer the 3 key questions. Today we asked Dave Van de Maele, a service designer and founder of Knightmoves, to give us his take.

1) Can you explain what service design is? And how your company implements it / uses that field?

  • Service design is applying the principles of good design to the structure of an organisation . The aim is to improve the experience of customers. 
  •  We use research & service design to help teams better frame and solve the challenges within their system. We create and implement new designs with them for improved customer experiences.

2) What do you believe is the greatest opportunity for your company using service design?

  • The greatest opportunity for our company is that we can boost change and have positive impacts in very complex systems by using service design. We often work for public organisations where stakeholders, policies, systems and networks are important to understand to have succes. Through people interactions & prototyping we are able to align teams and get frequent feedback on findings or results.

3) Can you share three tips for implementing service design in their own practice?

  • Details are important, but so is a bigger picture. Always deduct on your divergent thinking to proceed. 
  • Use the power of storytelling and metaphors to improve your facilitation and to align people on shared visions.
  •  Prototype early, and often. Even strategies and operational processes can be iterated.

Dave is Managing Partner of Knight Moves, a service design studio based in Gent that has a framework contract with the Flemish Government for service design. 

 

Read Dave Van de Maele 's full biography here.

And find out more about his SDGC16 workshop Kingdom here.

See all articles

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