The question every start-up grapples with is ''If We Build It Will They (Customers) Come?'' A failed attempt made a start-up wary to invest in a new offering. Using Service Design, we helped them figure out what the market really wants to buy. We help them cut through expensive market research, test and validate the market opportunity, and release a far more mature solution well received by customers and set them on the growth path.

Service design is currently dominated by a focus on the user journey, and therefore is not sufficient in itself for highly complex public challenges which cross agencies and sectors. To tackle complex public sector issues, the integration of systemic design capacity and a cross-disciplinary approach is crucial.

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.

This article shows how a systemic design approach was used to support the implementation of a policy direction that touches multiple services and organisations. It discusses how a team of designers and policy makers mobilised services to action through breaking silos, building empathy and developing a community of practice.

In 2016 the Canadian federal government introduced a new pay system, called Phoenix. The system was meant to be automated and cost-effective, saving the government millions of dollars a year. Instead, what transpired is described as the most serious pay debacle in Canadian history and an “incomprehensible failure” by the Canadian auditor general. While the federal government exists in its current state of transition – waiting for a new system and unable to go back to the old one – individual departments throughout the federal government are designing their own band-aid solutions to support employees.

During the spring of 2019 Dutch newspapers were filled with articles about stress in pharmacies, due to regular medicine switches for patients. These switches are caused by material and medicine shortages, poor deliverability, a change in preferential medicine of various health insurers or pharmacists, or medicine being taken off the market.

Our organization, governed by legislation and policy, is one of the largest insurance organizations in North America. We cover five million people in over 300,000 workplaces across our province. Coverage with our organization is mandatory for many businesses in our province, who may not be aware of the necessity or plethora of services we provide. Past efforts to improve our financial position, while necessary, came at the expense of good customer service. Over the years, there began to be a problematic decline in customer satisfaction.

We're a global small business, accounting and bookkeeping software-as-a-service company with 3,000+ employees committed to building beautiful experiences for our 2 .38 million subscribers, located across 20 offices in eight countries.

Little over 850.000 citizens live in this diverse, beautiful city. From Marc to Mohammed. From baby to granny. From garbage collector to PhD student. Every citizen has their context, needs, wishes and challenges. How to design online services that can be used by everyone?

The client has led the hearing health market for decades as a holistic provider of devices, diagnostics, and support services. With the threat from new competitors emerging from adjacent categories, and shifts in regulation and technology, the client needed to be at the forefront of innovation to ensure its future position in the category.

People migrating to the UK can apply for a ‘right to remain’ based on their socio-economic circumstances or their rights under the Refugee Convention or Human Rights Act. Each year approximately 50,000 people raise an appeal when their applications are rejected.

We worked with an independent state government authority to deeply understand the experience for Indigenous Australians in applying for a Working with Children Check (WWCC), and how the impact from not having one plays out to great detriment.

Developing intercultural practices and attitudes in public schools

What if just one person in a restaurant has COVID19? It spreads like wildfire.

Universal design, design for all - By Juan David León, Strategic Designer at Mormedi

How TELUS is reimagining the future of telecom through service design and digital transformation

In the past years, many organisations have been working on pro­­jects to improve service experiences. Increasingly, large ­organisations have started to understand the value of service design. This has resulted in a growing desire amongst organi­sations that ‘understand’ service design to embed it into their companies.

In this article, we discuss that service designers are particularly well equipped with skills and tools to create change in organisations and can do so more explicitly by applying a flywheel capability model to their work.

Service design and agile practices are leading approaches to create and deliver value. Here, we present a successful case where both approaches accelerated the implementation of new service experiences, supported nation-wide scalability and created a new organisational culture.

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.

Was kann Service Design in Organisationen leisten?

The energy and utilities sector globally had a natural reluctance to ‘jump’ into new technology without prolonged periods of assessment and testing - at times lasting decades.

It was not so long ago that if one were asked the question "What is design?", the response would likely have described a creative process resulting in the production of a tangible object that could be seen, touched, smelled or even consumed.

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.