Service Design Show

A decade-long reflection on switching from engineering to design and leaving an agency to follow a creative pull. He talks about structuring multidisciplinary teams and why community matters more than audience. You’ll hear about friction as a tool, walking as a clarity practice, and the quiet power of consistent, unglamorous work.

Birgit Geiberger, a design leader who champions regenerative, human-centered leadership. She explores why leadership must change in the age of AI. Short practices for restoring energy and team rituals to slow down. How to embed designers into business and align design with impact. Practical first steps to lead with head and heart and bring joy back to work.

Siddhartha Saxena, an architect-turned-healthcare service designer working on telemedicine and org nervous systems. Kara Snyder, a former accountant and coach now shaping culture and claims in financial services. They explore resilience as capacity not output. They discuss creating a liminal space between self and work, rituals to protect capacity, and ways to sustain meaningful, people-centered service design.

Belen Tello, Head of Design at Peru’s largest bank who leads 150+ designers, discusses using service design to build trust and inclusion across diverse Peruvian communities. She talks about training designers to speak the bank’s language with data. She explains roleplay prep for stakeholder meetings, working with legal and compliance, and redesigning branches to shift from transactional to relational banking.

Will Sharples, service design lead at Toyota Connected EU who focuses on pragmatic in-house practice and reusable assets. Maxe van Heeswijk, in-house design pro who builds journey libraries and ROI models. They spar over whether dedicated software grants legitimacy, how to turn boards into story-rich assets, measuring long vs short-term value, and selling service design inside large organizations.

Giulia Di Gregorio, strategist and co-organizer of Service Design Drinks Milan, runs a volunteer, pirate-style community that champions experimentation and third places. She discusses how service design practice is spreading under new job titles. She explains building flat, autonomous nodes, volunteer-led continuity, cross-community synergies, and scaling through small independent hubs.

Joe Pine, author and management thinker behind The Experience Economy, explores how businesses move from experiences to lasting transformations. He contrasts time well spent with time well invested. He explains encapsulation, identity change, and charging for outcomes. He maps transformation across health, wealth, wisdom, and purpose and urges designers to design for customer flourishing.

Jochem van der Veer, CEO of TheyDo, brings his expertise in journey management and customer experience to explore fascinating predictions for 2026. He discusses the evolution of journey frameworks, emphasizing the necessity of quality data to answer vital business questions. Jochem highlights common roadblocks like data access and costs, offering practical strategies to overcome them. He boldly forecasts the rise of CX engineers and AI agents, anticipating a future where technology handles routine tasks while humans provide critical oversight. A must-listen for anyone interested in the future of customer experience!

Kendra Shimmell, a tech leader and service design advocate, challenges the current obsession with optimization that risks leading to mediocrity. She discusses the pitfalls of A/B testing, emphasizing that it often overlooks the 'why' behind user behavior. Kendra shares insights on how constant experimentation can exhaust customers and stifle creativity. She advocates for co-creation and the inclusion of serendipity in design, suggesting playful interactions to reignite genuine discovery and emotional engagement in user experiences.

In this engaging discussion, service design experts Jessica Dugan and Judith Buhmann delve into the complexities of integrating AI into design workflows. Jessica shares her framework for developing custom AI agents that act as effective 'junior associates,' while Judith highlights the ethical considerations of using AI, especially with vulnerable populations. They explore the balance of trust in AI tools, the importance of transparency, and how these digital 'interns' can enhance rather than replace human creativity in service design.