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 Jonas Piet, a service designer at InWithForward, to give us his take.

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

In our work with non-profit and public sector we use the theater metaphor. We say service design is creating and testing all elements that make up the performance. That includes what you see and hear on-stage: the setting, actors, script and props. It also includes what happens back-stage: rehearsals, a booking system, technicians, etc.The equivalents in our world are not far off:  service settings, roles, scripts and touchpoints, as well as back-end processes, systems and back-office roles.

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

We build-up social sector organizations' capacity to deliver change. Service design allows us to develop, test and demonstrate what new practice actually looks like. It's a real opportunity to help organizations shift from a risk and safety culture, to continuous learning and development. 

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

•  Whatever you do, don't see it as a one-off. It's way better to sustain something small than to stop something big.

•  Link service design with delivery. If possible, do the design on a site where you can be on top of all your users - managers, front-line staff and end-users.

•  Test everything before you feel comfortable. The vast majority of projects rests comfortably in the service design graveyard. 

Jonas Piet is partner and lead Service Designer at InWithForward. He worked across the public, private, and social sectors in Europe and North America. He’s designed services with homeless young people in The Netherlands; with older socially isolated people in London at social enterprise Participle; and with civil servants at Engine Service Design. 

Read Jonas Piet 's full biography here.

And find out more about his SDGC16 talk " Shifting practice and policy through learning platform Kudoz"  here.

 

Related Community Knowledge

Meet the service designer Meet the service designer: Natalie Kuhn (she/her)

Meet the service designer: Natalie Kuhn (she/her)

Along with fellow service design pioneers in the New York City area, Natalie Kuhn helped establish the SDN New York Chapter. In the years since, her team and chapter have been recognised with awards for their chapter activities, and she has been involved with the global SDN's efforts around Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, as part of a taskforce established in 2020. She also manages to find time for her day job: Managing service design at US banking giant Capital One. Here, she chats with Touchpoint Editor-in-Chief Jesse Grimes about her roles and ambitions.

Continue reading
Meet the service designer Patti Hunt:  Meet the service designer

Patti Hunt: Meet the service designer

Patti Hunt is the founder and director of MAKE Studios, a service innovation company based in Hong Kong. For this edition of the Touchpoint Profile, she had a chat with Jesse Grimes, the journal’s Editor-in-Chief, about her work with multi-national corporations, NGOs and start-ups in the Asia-Pacific region, as well as the unique challenges posed by practicing service design in Hong Kong.

Continue reading
Meet the service designer Eleonora Carnasa: Meet the service designer

Eleonora Carnasa: Meet the service designer

Eleonora Carnasa is a Bulgaria-based service designer and founder of Fabrica 360, a design and innovation agency. In this profile, she had a chat with Jesse Grimes, Touchpoint’s Editor-in-Chief, about her efforts to grow service design in Eastern Europe.

Continue reading
Meet the service designer Luis Alt: Meet the service designer

Luis Alt: Meet the service designer

Established in 2010, Livework’s São Paulo outpost is a service design pioneer in one of the world’s top-ten largest economies - Brazil. Since then, the team has worked with an enviable roster of clients, but also experienced the challenges of carrying out service design before it became widely recognised. In this edition of the Touchpoint Profile, Editor-in-Chief Jesse Grimes speaks to Luis Alt, one of the studio’s founders.

Continue reading