A group of 7 people who attended the Service Design Network Global Conference 2014 in Stockholm on October 6,7,8 2014, have shared their experiences, take-aways and ideas in a Whatsapp group, during and after the conference. This deck shares their findings with a wider audience, hoping to initiate a healthy debate in the service design community, on where we ant to go with our conferences. We hope to see you all next year, to share an even better experience together!

1. SDNGC14 feedback report
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Edwin Wibbelink | Rabobank
Wim Rampen | Delta Lloyd
Maarten Jurriaanse | Ping Pong Design
Ralf Beuker | Fachhochschule Münster, Fachbereich Design
Anastasia Agafonova | Co-meta
Alexandra Agafonova | Co-meta
Erik Roscam Abbing | Zilver Innovation
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Stockholm, october 2014

2. 1. Introduction
This is a report on the Service Design Network global conference,
held in Stockholm from October 6-8 2014. The authors of this report
have attended the conference in a group of 7 people with a varied
background, ranging from corporate organizations to academia to
design agencies and students.
During and after the conference we shared our findings and
experiences in a Whatsapp group, in order to extend our learning and
deepen our experience.
This report is a summary of the discussions we’ve had with the group.
It is not meant as criticism because we have enjoyed the conference
enormously. The venue, the crowd, the food, the parties, and the
organization were all perfect. It is more meant as constructive
support in making the next edition even better. If you would like to
discuss our findings in person, we are gladly available to support you!
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Cheers!
Wim, Edwin, Maarten, Ralf, Anastasia, Alexandra, Erik

3. 2. General findings “we missed some
In general we experienced the conference as a great gathering
of fantastic people from all over the world, in an open setting
and with a great sense of community.
But we’ve found the presentations insufficiently engaging. We
felt they were too general, too much addressing a laymen’s
audience, and sometimes not clearly presenting a point.
Next to that we found that the workshops we attended didn’t
meet our expectations.
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We’ve been having quite some debate on why that was exactly,
and whether this can actually be solved in the setting of a 500
person conference where levels of expertise, interests,
backgrounds and expectations differ so greatly.
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Our conclusion is that we think it should be possible to design a
better conference experience for everyone, and on the next
pages we would like to share some ideas with you.
depth or at least
openness in the cases
presented “I personally felt a lack of
detailing examples and
cases, an exchange of
professional knowledge
“The conference
talks stayed at a
theoretical and
abstract level
“We expect to hear more tricks,
unexpected solutions, tools
that were redesigned/
especially helpful used in
particular contexts.
There's probably not a lot of NEW
things one could share for a
specialized audience.
should be about raising questions
and discussion

4. 3. Ideas on content “Presenting failures is good, I
✦ Introduce an expert track, with only highly specialized topics.
No generic stories on service design but only high level
complex topics.
✦ Forbid general case studies without a purpose. Each case has
to clearly illustrate a controversial point or else it is forbidden ;)
✦ Also forbid success stories, each presentation has to contain at
least 3 failures, mistakes, or unresolved challenges.
✦ Introduce expert discussion groups next to the workshops
where you can go to discuss a specialized topic with peers,
instead of participating in a workshop. Many of us are in
workshops all the time, they don’t challenge us enough.
✦ Introduce a track "impact on Service Design from other
(emerging) disciplines" as well.. Topics to suggest are big data,
behavioral economics, neuro-sience, robotica, Internet of
things etc.
would also add success stories
with clear points of how they
framed the challenge and what
helped them achieve it.
“maybe not everyone can
get in this expert track,
some kind of motivation
or experience is required
“It's always good to have another perspective
and broader vision on our field and to not let
it become our religion, but we find the 2 days
program already too reduced in terms of
insights and learning
“I would always include a few
'left-field' speakers such as
biologists, TV directors,
whatever CEOs and especially
Buddhist Monks

5. 3. Ideas on delivery
“I have to link these nicely
formulated inspiring words
with real cases or just small
examples to make it start
living and growing in my
head
“This speaker corner
could also likely engage
me better with the
conference prior to it
“We as visitors truly expect to
get some tricks, examples and
learnings we could directly
apply. And learn from mistakes
and failures
“SDN should require speakers to
be fully honest and tell their story
with all the failures and pitfalls
and how they resolved these.
✦ Have some kind of speaker coaching, especially around
making sure you present a well defined and clear point in your
talk.
✦ Avoid too many ‘American-style’ presentations in the line-up.
The very flamboyant and ‘practiced way of presenting doesn’t
always resonate with Europeans.
✦ As a speaker, Wim Rampen found it makes sense to open an
online "speakers corner" to exchange conference details, talk
topics, material etc etc..
✦ Every speaker should bring failures and solutions, the applied
method in their way of work to be shared in a useful form,
insight in the ecosystem (project, budget, stakeholders,
methods, tools, suppliers etc) they built in order to make it
work and what they would do differently in a next project.

6. 4. What we loved
“Olly King was very
inspiring, as always”
“Kigge showed the
power of simplicity,
integration of services
and business models. And
some solid common
sense.
“Brainport Eindhoven could be
seen as such a system Kigge
referred to. Aims to foster
economic growth and
employment in the Eindhoven
area. Includes a wide variety of
services and an ecosystem that
spurs innovation
“Denis Weil’s
"stop trying to prove the
value of design to your
stakeholders, just shut up
and deliver valuable
outcomes”.
✦ Oliver King held a very useful and clear presentation, openly
sharing a very valuable Engine tool with the audience.
✦ Kigge May Hvid made a good case that we do not need more
services and products. We need connecting of products &
services into large scale systems that provide solutions for
bigger problems. We do not need a newer wheelchair.. We
need to take care of the elderly.
✦ Fred Leichter from fidelity showed some great examples of
conversation prototyping. The family conversations at the
kitchen table were impactful.
✦ Denis Weil did a good job showing us the challenges that lie
ahead for designers in the future.

7. 5. Our key take aways - 1
✦ Erik: Integrated system design (the kind Kigge referred to) gets
really complex. Too much so for service designers alone to be
relevant. At the TU Delft we do quite a bit of research into
networked, multi stakeholder innovation where dynamic
complexity and uncertainty are very high. Most integrated
product service systems have these qualities. It's an emerging
hybrid domain with a lot of work to do for smart service
designers, on the condition that we learn to work closely with
other knowledge domains.
✦ Maarten: I think there's nothing wrong with the need for
recipes. It works extremely well for companies such as
Southwest in delivering outstanding services by all employees
(see 'Great by Choice' by Collins). Problem is that such recipes
are hard to generalize. They work for focused businesses.
✦ I would be interested to see a bit more about behavioral
psychology, sense making/laddering in regards to customers
and stakeholders in the next conference.

8. 5. Our key take aways - 2
✦ Edwin: We are moving from design as a skill set to design as a
mindset and movement within an organization. Added value
will come naturally without having to ask, safeguard or have
permission from the board. Stop complaining that we have the
wrong position or aren't heard yet; do it, show it, proof it with
value and meaning for the customer. Start small, make steps
with little proof, acquire budget for a pilot, build knowledge
and more proof, build a community internally, develop tools,
let others do projects as well etc etc. This is the internal
movement. When mature enough ( years later, but maybe
small initiaties already earlier), connect to the outside, where
you tend to step into social design and over arching issues and
values. I would be interested to see more examples and
experiences that support these steps in either small or big
companies or environments. And that form a new ecosystem
within these environments.

9. 5. Our key take aways - 3
✦ Wim: I tend to disagree when people advocate their discipline
needs to be more up in the value chain. For several reasons:
1.What side of the value chain is up? I think it's the
opposite of the customers end, in most minds. Not sure
that is the best end.
2.There isn't enough room at the boardroom table to host
all disciplines.
3.If what we need is outcomes we should not put (part of )
the solution to getting there at center stage.
✦ Erik: Designers often say they want to move up the value
chain. But what they may mean is that they want to be on the
side of the initiative, the responsibility, the decision taking.
And at the same time at the side of the customer. We think
that’s what makes design entrepreneurship (or
intrapreneurship) interesting: to sit not at the boardroom
table, but at the customer’s coffee table. But with the vision
and the initiative to make things happen.

10. 5. Our key take aways - 4
✦ Ralf:
1.SD is not an isolated phenomenon any more, but rather an
ecosystem where a) where services, established and new are
integrated with each other and b) front-end and back-end
systems need to be synchronized in order to generate superior
service experiences.
2.service Design tends to be a highly customized challenge in
terms of coming up with appropriate solutions. However the
current state of the profession shows that the evolution of SD
models, methods and tools provide solid strategies addressing
the challenges ahead

11. 5. Our key take aways - 5
✦ Erik:
1.I like the challenge for SD to create eco-systems that deliver
integrated experiences, whereby the integration has two
dimensions: a horizontal integration of touch points in time,
and a vertical integration of those touch points with the
channels, staff, IT, technology, data, and culture that enable
them.
2.I think this idea of networked service design is interesting and
important: integrating partners in value networks delivering
service eco-systems that from the customer perspective feel as
a seamless experience but from the business perspective
require many different capabilities to deliver them. (Health
care, urban spaces like brainport, airports, etc)
3.SD only makes sense if you integrate it with other value
generating business efforts and resources, it's not an isolated
discipline, in fact it's not a discipline at all. It makes sense
combined with big data, HR, brand, CEX, CI, IoT, etc

12. 5. Our key take aways - 6
✦ Alexandra:
1.The trend in Service Design Implementation is Minimum Viable
Products. But we’re not designing for Minimum Viable Humans. As
responsible service designers we should avoid just speeding up the
pace of innovation. We should always ask ourselves, our clients and
their customers: “do we actually want this innovation?”.
2.As service designers we need to gain trust from Business people. The
trend: design agencies will be moving in the direction of ‘classic'
business consulting to gain credibility & from C-Level. That will
ensure implementation through validation by business metrics. This
prompts collaborations between business and design schools and
inclusion of business strategy in design schools.
3.To make service design viewed as an effective tool for addressing
societal challenges and to mainstream it within public services, we
need to provide our new audience more concrete evidence of
impact and return on investment. Some kind of Service evaluation
model should become part of every service designer’s toolkit.

13. 5. Our key take aways - 7
✦ Anastasia:
1.I see a trend where CX, UX and SD are merging together in a
customer-centric world and the borders between them become
quite blurry (especially so for the outside world). We need to
define more clearly what the overlaps and differences are between
them and what kind of different business and customer issues
they deal with. As practitioners we need to have a debate around
whether amidst all these the emerging disciplines Service Design
has a solid place to fill, or whether maybe it should merge with
these other emerging fields into one coherent whole.
2.My personal take away is the adjustable maturity model that
Oliver King has shown us. Self assessment of the maturity level of
customer experience within an organization is vital and helps it to
become much more focused in the CX efforts they pursue.
3.I find the topic of behavioral psychology very interesting and
relevant for us as service designers and I woud love to learn more
about it in the next conference.

14. 5. Our key take aways - 8
✦ Maarten:
Our critique slightly aims in two different directions: on the one
hand we call for more / deeper expert knowledge sharing, on the
other, we wish for a more broader agenda including adjacent
academic terrains such as behavioral psychology. Not saying that
one should exclude the other, but SDN’s aim to connect to a wide
audience is in my opinion the best path to avoid situations like with
DMI, where each conference the same question comes up: "what is
the meaning, value, ROI... Etc of Design management... (Or service
design for that matter)?" The quality of this community is in its
diversity and its capability to attract new and adjacent (business)
audiences. Too much self reflection can threaten this quality, I think.
To me the biggest insight is that we really need to figure out how to
integrate our expertise in other fields to start contributing to
'coherent systems'. This question should precede each venture; how
will my business improve/contribute to existing 'systems'.

15. 5. Our key take aways - 9
✦ Edwin:
In general I think that the quality of the conference will benefit if
the SDN community shares a common idea of bringing the SD
field further. Then one will share more beneficial insights, cases,
solutions and tools. Oliver King sharing an valuable tool to the
audience is a good example. For the next conference an expert
track on tools would be perfect for that.
I would be interested to see more corporates, (big) clients from
healthcare, finance, energy, insurance, municipals, government etc
that use SD from their own perspective. We all (kind of )
understand what we should do with SD, but the more interesting
perspective is what they expect - and this is where the money is
and where the decisions are taken.

16. Wim: “In other words: SD has evolved from the design of
products to the design of services to the design of experiences.
Now it’s taking the next step towards designing for outcomes.
This not only requires a move from design doing to thinking, but
also from integrating & orchestrating touch points to integrating
capabilities & services into ecosystems that deliver these
outcomes.”
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We want to thank the organizers and all attendees for a great conference experience!
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Wim | Maarten | Edwin | Ralf | Anastasia | Alexandra | Erik