Meet the Next Generation Service Designers (Recorded Live at SDGC Helsinki).

In this episode we get inspired by 7 incredible next generation Service Designers. We find out about how they view the world of design, where they go to get inspired, them and which emoji or meme best represents their design styles.

Featured in this episode:

Marcela Gómez Abundis
Eva Mega Astria
Jane Tzu-Yuan Chao
Anna Han
Jihee Hwang
Linda Paulauska
Agata Kowalska  


Resources Listed In this Episode.

Marcela's Mega List of Design Resources Notion Page

Userpalooza- A Field Researcher's Guide.

Doug Deets video on Transforming Healthcare.

Fireside chat with Don Norman

Change by Design. Tim Brown

Humans of New York (and other countries)

Jane Jacobs documentary


Dan Hill: Dark Matter and Trojan Horses video

This is Service Design Thinking/Doing 


This episode's interviewers were:
Alice Kennedy
Jean Watanya

Service Design YAP is developed and produced by the Service Design Network UK Chapter.
Its aim is to engage and connect the wider Service Design community.

• Episode Host: Stephen Wood
• Production Assistance: Jean Watanya

Transcript

00:14
Hello everyone, welcome to the special episode of the Service Design YAP. We are at the Service Design Global Conference in Helsinki. Today we have seven amazing talented new designers with us. And we have seven questions for them all about design and what they think. So I'm Alice, I'm a service designer from London. I am Jean, also a service designer from London.

00:40
And we want to thank Service Design Network to give us an opportunity to be here at Helsinki. See you! Cool! See you!

00:55
Thank you so much for being here, Marcela. Can you tell me a little bit about yourself, your background, and what brought you to Helsinki? Hi, thank you for having me. My name is Marcela. I'm from Mexico, and I'm currently studying here a master's degree in server design strategies and innovation at CSI. It's my second year of this course, of these programs. I'm a scholarship holder from Erasmus Mundus. So that's why I'm here all over, across the pond, very far, far.

01:24
away from my city. And yeah, I mean, currently in Tallinn and next semester I'll be in Finland. So yeah, very, very exciting. Great. So what have you learned so far from the talk? Which talk you found most impactful? Well, I really liked the talk from today from Andy Polen on design leadership. I have a few experience as a design manager. So most of the things he talked about definitely are going into my notes for.

01:52
when I come back to the working field again, soon. So hopefully in a year or so. But mostly I'm feeling very empowered by all the Latina power movement. Oh my God, like I'm so inspired by Angelica Fuentes, Paula, also meeting people from Latin America that are quite a few. Montse Moreno from Guadalajara. So I'm like, I can be one of them. So maybe, yeah, I'm super, super happy to meet them. So yeah, this networking, this net.

02:22
bonding, I think goes beyond screens and actually talking with new people. It's been amazing. Yeah. This kind of conference is quite special when you see people like from maybe you're similar feel or you are, you are countries or your continent and you just feel like, oh, very inspiring from these people, that's the best way to connect to people as well. The next question is what is your design style in an emoji or a meme? Oh my God. Yeah.

02:49
This is my favorite, you know, like the dog that's on fire that says, this is fine. That's basically me because everyone keeps asking me like, why do you seem so calm? You know, like you seem like a very patient person, but on the inside I'm like, no, I'm just me. It's fine. And everything else burning on fire. Yeah, that's like the approach I like to have like, okay. Maybe in the inside I'm stressed, but it's fine. It's going to be fine.

03:16
So what day-to-day annoyance would you most likely to surface the service design and why? That's a very interesting story I just discovered. So we went to this workshop on Wednesday. It was by Citra with Lily and Thery. So we learned about these weak signals and how to, before they become trans, you know, like kind of like acknowledge them before in these future scenarios.

03:40
And while doing this exercise and this process, I realized, like living right now, in my own experience, the fall of dating apps. You know, like, yeah, while the dating apps were in their boom, I was like in my early 20s, I wasn't in a relationship, so I was not very interesting, but now I'm not. I didn't single life. It's extremely boring, you know, like this...

04:06
dating apps and like, yeah, there's so many as well. There's so many. Yeah. And I'm telling like, I want to meet people just, you know, uh, but yeah, it's not, not working for me. And I was in Spain last summer and I learned about this new like trend or hype. Everyone is going about going to this supermarket called Mercadona at that specific time and people just go there and bump cars.

04:34
you know, your girls are regarding to each other like as a dating thing. It became like a, like a joke, I think, like a meme on social media, but I think it's like there's something there, you know, something that we could do, like a social design as a generation maybe that.

04:48
I think we're looking for some more like in-person connections, like more than just swiping left or right. Yeah, because the advance of the technology and then we kind of lack of like human touch or kind of those things. And I have heard that the supermarket thing become viral and people actually do that. Yeah, I really like your challenge and you want to serve here. Yeah, I think it's something because also I have a lot of friends who are joining running clubs. Sadly, I don't run, so I cannot do it.

05:17
But there's something there like moving into more meaningful connections maybe in person like as we used to. So yeah, it would be worth exploring some service there. Yes, and if you can bring one collaborator along the journey, who are you bringing? This person can be alive or dead? I thought about that question. I don't have any specific person in mind right now, but I think my friends because I talked with my...

05:45
closest friends about this. And like, you know, I forgot how to flirt already. It's like, I'm asking my friend, like, what should I say? What should I do? What do you think? You know, it's like, I think to design these things, to think about this is more like collaborative approach with your peers, with people like in this similar situation. So rather than like one specific that or like person, I think just like my people, my peers around me.

06:13
What challenges faced by your generation would you most like to solve with the service design and why? Yeah, I think related to this to find these more services spaces to create these meaningful connections or I think also because of COVID, you know, we were quite socially isolated in a way. So going back to these two, because if you're not studying or in your workplace, there's not like an actual way to meet new people to expand your network.

06:43
Not romantically, but also with friendships. So things like these conferences, these services and network, other types of networks are great things to meet people. Yeah. Coming to the last question. So do you have like any resources, books or your role models that have inspired or influenced your design journey? Well, to be honest, I'm a massive nerd and I have a lot of design books, a lot of design resources.

07:09
I cannot think of one in particular, but I do have an ocean page that I can share with you with all my resources. Wow. And yeah. So you collect everything. I collect everything. Most of them I haven't read yet, but I'm like constantly. Save it for later. Yeah, save it for later, like screenshot my good reads. Also it's there are a lot of design tools and resources and I have a few more from all these two days from the conference. So I'm building it up and constantly adding stuff.

07:38
But yeah, I can share with you the link if you're interested. Yeah, definitely. We're going to have Masala's resources after this to share with everyone. For sure. Yeah, thank you so much for your time today, Masala. Thank you so much.

07:58
Today we have Eva here, tell us a bit about your background. What brought you to the service design conference in Helsinki? Yes, happy to be here. My name is Eva. I'm originally from Indonesia and I came to Finland one year ago, exactly, to study masters in Aalto University and my degree is in international design business management. So you might now think where's the service design part? The whole master's not about service design.

08:28
But on my second year now I'm taking a course called designing for services. And that's what brought me here. I totally didn't know what does this kind of event. And then our lecturers mentioned that, oh, there's this huge event happening at Helsinki and we want you to also have the chance to attend and they gave some spots to the students and so here I am. Amazing. That's so cool.

08:55
Okay. So we're going to jump into a few questions that we've got. So what have you learned so far? Which talk have you found most impactful? The keynote speaker with Maria, I think. Yeah. And then we had one with Joffena, I think. Ah, yeah. You were in the same room as me. Yeah, that's cool. So they talk about this plurality. Yeah. I also discovered it. I like...

09:24
I tried to say it, hilarity and it's something I find is a tongue twister, but a really cool concept. What did you like about those talks? I love, yesterday we also had the chance to listen to Femkes talking in our world. As a guest lecturer today, I met them again and I was like, well, this is a very nice topic and something that really resonates with me. And I think it's very important talking about plurality and how...

09:54
You always have to question and reflect on your own thinking as well as the current society and how it was built and all the legacies that are in this world. And it kind of made me think critically of my, my stance as a designer, as well as me as a person on how to approach like any situations, not to take things for granted and keep questioning. Okay. The toughest question.

10:23
What is your design style in an emoji or a meme and why? Yeah, design style. This is a very hard question for me. And as a graphic designer, kind of like thought, I feel like when you ask me, design style would suddenly think about this visually, kind of. And I like to think myself that I don't like to put myself in a box.

10:52
What's your style? I don't know if I have a style or not. And it's always something that within my practice, I always try to see what I am working on, put myself into it and be as flexible as I could with the situation. So maybe animal emoji that represents kind of flexibility or... Fish.

11:20
Could be a fish. I like that. Yeah. Oh, a butterfly I like because like a butterfly is also a caterpillar at one point. It's like very, it's very flexible. Yes. Yeah, I like it. I like that gene. We were talking about this last night. Do you want to share the one that you picked? Oh yeah. I just like thought about the hippopotamus, like the famous one called Moudang. So it's like a bit...

11:48
panic and jumping around and bouncing around. That's my style of the design. Okay. I like this question because I think we're going to get some interesting ideas. So what day-to-day annoyance would you most like to solve with service design? This is funny because I feel like after I came to Finland one year ago, I stopped feeling annoyed because it's just so hard to get annoyed in Finland because everything just works.

12:17
It's like the public service, public transportation words, everything words. And I feel like I have nothing to complain about here. But if you asked me one year ago, when I was still in my home country, I think I would, once you step out of the house, you would get annoyed and like, there are a lot of things that I want to fix. But maybe one thing here in Finland that I noticed is that we think in every possible way of how to.

12:47
uh, make it as efficient as possible. But sometimes I feel like when you really need a person to ask, it's hard to find someone. You have efficient to out having a person to talk to or interaction. What challenges are faced by your generation that you would most like to solve with service design and why? Yeah. I've been reflecting it a lot as well.

13:12
can we actually do or I can do with it. And I think that we're now living in a society or growing in a time where everything is polarized and there's so much things happening. And I think what I really like also like coming back to this conference and they talked about like this inclusive design and also like how to embrace this plurality, it was something that that's why I really like because I think.

13:42
We need to kind of bring more people into conversation with our design practice. I think I really like now feel like service design can be a tool for us to make voices that otherwise are unheard.

14:02
Hi Jane and welcome, thanks for coming to chat to us today. Thank you for having me. Yeah, tell us a little bit about yourself and your background and what brought you to Kalsinki. Sure. So my name is Jane, I originally come from Taiwan but right now I'm based in Glasgow, Scotland. I have been in Scotland for over two years, just two years, and I came to Scotland for my Master's at Service Design at Glasgow School of Art but I graduated last year.

14:28
But before I came to here for my master, I have been working as a project and product manager after completing my bachelor's in statistics. So well, apparently I'm not kind of obedient person. My work experience actually is nothing about statistics. I kind of keep jumping to lots of different industry and have privilege to collaborate with lots of different talent from different background. And I guess it's all this diverse experience gradually shift my perspective towards service design.

14:58
I'm really curious about the statistics. I feel like I could, as a service designer, I could really benefit from having a statistics background, especially with like all the research. Does it come into like a lot of how you approach things you think? I was actually kind of advantage I had, combine the quantitative research and qualitative research, which can utilize the numerical data, but also can combine with the emotional insight. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, that's very cool.

15:26
And we want to know what have you learned so far at the conference today? I guess one of the significant impact I felt is a lot of speakers they mentioned about cross-disciplinary and also collaboration. Yeah. So I found it so significant, especially for me is if you want to drive some impact. I feel like the most important thing is to being inclusive. What?

15:56
Day-to-day annoyance, would you like to most solve with service design and why? One issue I really want to solve is, I use service design is to help people. Maybe we can think more deeply about the problem behind the problem instead of the service problem we see. Yeah. Okay. So I actually just was at a talk that was talking about like the meta problem.

16:24
Or like the meta part of design is what we're here to solve for, not just what we're designing, but what the impact is of that design or the thing that's further behind that. Is that what you mean? Kind of. And also I think one of the power of service design is sometimes we rush to fix the problem, but it's more important to ask, so is it the real problem? If you're going to collaborate with anybody, they can be alive or dead. Who would you like to collaborate with to solve this challenge?

16:54
I think also can reflect to our previous discussion is like, we would like to bring more people into this conversation and to provoke more conversation. So I guess it's Da Vinci? Da Vinci? Yeah. He's kind of polymath. Yes. Yeah. He knew lots of different things and kind of can combine art and science and invention.

17:21
And I always try different way to break the conventional. And if you were to think about what challenges faced by your generation, you were most likely to solve with service design, what would they be and why? Well, I think in the most bigger picture, I guess it's like geopolitics conflicts for sure, but if we can think about in our daily life, one of the issue I really

17:51
solve or to make it become better, I guess it's intergenerational gap. Okay. Yeah. What particularly do you want to change about that? As I mentioned, like we really want to bring more people into our conversation. And some of the aspects that we primarily to think about maybe is like culture and our different background or our different discipline, something like that. But I found one of the interesting thing.

18:19
we somehow neglect is we come from different generation. Yeah, as we all are bringing in the different contexts and it would be really interesting to think more about our different perspective.

18:39
Hi Anna, thanks for joining us. Would you mind telling us a little bit about yourself, your background and what brought you to Service Design Conference in Helsinki? Yes, I'm Anna. I'm from New Zealand, but I've been living in Berlin for one year now. I'm at the Global Conference in Helsinki because I am part of the partners team of the organizing volunteer team. And I've been helping with media partners such as Service Design YAP and organizing some on-site.

19:06
podcast recordings or other ways to promote the conference. Awesome. And because you've been behind the scenes today, maybe you see anything that you've enjoyed particularly about the conference from the behind the scenes perspective. Oh yeah, just seeing all the shit that goes on behind the scenes. Like for example, yesterday there was a fire alarm and on the guest side people were quite confused but I knew that on the inside why that was happening.

19:32
And even we were confused internally as well, because there was a fault with the sprinkler system. Oh. Yeah, it took a while to sort, but there are other examples such as timing issues or delays. Just really simple things get blown up and then for an event where time is so precious and important, you got to stick to it a while, so the whole schedule blows up. It was just quite fun. I don't know about actually fun shouldn't be the word I use, but it was a memory that I will keep. Well, there's memory in the chaotic bits, right?

20:01
This in itself is a service if we're going to be that really meta about it. So you're just getting a different experience in the volunteer team. So that's really cool. What is your design style in an emoji or meme and why? Ah, I want to actually talk about the emoji I use the most in my Slack or teams. I use the kissy winking face the most. And even with people I've never met before, I kiss and wink at them. And I kind of like it when they're a little bit.

20:31
I don't know, freaked out by the intimacy, but I do it because I want to get closer. I want to close the gap and maybe I'm a little perverse as well. But I like to kind of kill them with kindness. Okay, nice. Lots of affection is your design style. Oh, that's a word. Yeah. Too much affection. What day-to-day annoyance would you most like to solve with service design and why? Firstly, I don't think...

20:59
every problem needs to be solved. But I have noticed at the conference, especially when it's quiet, and now that we're in like the smartphone age, people have their phones in their lap and there's always people, the phones are dropping on the floor and it makes a huge noise. And that's actually, well, for me, it's related to when you've got utensils. If you're going to drop them, they will always drop on the floor, never on the table, and then you have to get new utensils. So it's more like I-

21:27
maybe it's more, I'm angry at gravity or something. Why does it have to drop on the floor every time instead of just on the table? And who are you going to have join you to solve this problem? Who invented gravity? So, Isaac Newton. Yes. Yeah. It could be Isaac Newton. I did think Isaac Newton. Before I thought of him, I thought Albert Einstein is the only physicist I may know. And then I felt a bit dumb, so I went online. Physicist.

21:55
The Kiwi physicist that split the atom first, Ernest Rutherford, on the $100 bill. I did think maybe I should mention him. Nice. But then I thought, well, I don't have to gravity. Maybe since this is about design, I guess I should mention a designer. Yes, well, we'll leave that to you. Okay. I'll mention him anyway, because we're all designers. Maybe I would ask Philippe Starck, he's an industrial designer. Maybe I would like his...

22:24
perspective on rather than solving the problem, how would he, would he elevate the problem? Or maybe it's not a problem. Maybe it could be something more beautiful. Just in this podcast of how we could solve this is we could put little cat legs on the phones so they always like land on their feet. Yeah. Phones, cats, our cats are our phones. Yeah, maybe. Yeah, that could also work. Maybe this feeds into the next question, which is what challenged...

22:54
based by your generation, would you most like to solve service design and why? I guess I didn't say at the beginning. I'm a member of the SDN Young Talent Board. It's an offshoot from the SDN and we were founded to bridge the gap between academics, students, university and the industry, as well as being able to serve the student, young professional and career changing demographic. So we have our own.

23:19
conference every year in about April. Next one will be April, 2025. It's called SDN Next Gen Conference. Cool. And the entire purpose is to try and get people out, get graduates and new young blood, young service designers out of just studying and into real life practice. Do you have any thoughts on how we get more young talent? Our first project as Young Talent Boards to provide

23:49
the conference, which is more education, but that was our first step into perhaps we could close the knowledge gap and give other young designers, students a platform to project their perspectives and their ideas, their thoughts to the big world because just because we're young and inexperienced, it doesn't mean that we have an interesting take. So we invite

24:13
speakers and workshop facilitators such as Jean actually. Yeah, they've hosted a workshop at our 2024 edition. So that's our first step. It's little by little and we're learning from every conference how to make them better for the next cohort. Nice. And if anyone can hear a little bell ringing in the background, it means the break is over, but not this podcast. So we have one last question. Can you share any resources, books or role models that have inspired?

24:41
or influenced your design journey? I think like every other service designer and every other person at this conference, we all read, this is service design thinking, this is service design doing, those writers and basically the industry superstars, they come to the global conference every year. I better bring a book and get them to sign it. I will mention a Kiwi design researcher since I'm from New Zealand. His name is Nick Beaumass. His book is called Userpalooza, a field researcher's guide.

25:11
And he wants to focus on how to do the analysis post research, but he, his experience as a field researcher and the feedback he was getting from his clients was how do I actually do it? Um, so he wrote a book on how you can also do field research practically. And he does all the illustrations because he, I think he used to do drafting. I don't know. Yeah. But yeah, I want to give a shout out to Nick. Nice.

25:43
Hello, Jihee. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much, Jean, for inviting me. Hi, I'm Jihee, service and consultant based in Cologne, Germany, and also dealing with digital platform for a service and network. And I do a lot of things. I have some founders journey of Young Talent Board, the service and network, and also organized service and drinks, so a bunch of fun things.

26:10
Is that brought you to the Service Design Global Conference in Helsinki because you have been working with the SDN? It has been so great for three years. This is my third year to join the Global Conference alongside with Young Talent Board. Alright, let's dive into the first question. So what have you learned so far for the talk and which talk do you find most impactful? The design against capitalism has been interesting for me. She mentioned that creativity used to be available to everyone.

26:40
But as commodity became specialized, it's kind of like create the barrier for accessibility. So she talked about like labor and our perception and then she encouraged how we can escape the strap of reproduction of capitalism. So what is your design style in an emoji or a meme and why? I think my emoji would be heart. Like once I was doing this like leadership kind of analysis of my style.

27:07
And then it says, my literature style is love. Oh, that's really sweet. Also, you don't, you can't see Jihee here, but she has a glitter on her eye, which is in the heart shape as well. That really reflects your love style of the design. Um, so what day to day annoyance would you most like to serve with the service design and why? Do you get annoyed from any sort of like design work?

27:34
Because for me, designer is like source of optimism and that's how we like resolve the conflicts and challenges. And that's the real true power of design. So I don't really get annoyed. I mean, clients can be a bit like, yeah, yeah, changing things, but it's fine. We work it out. It sounds like you are quite adaptive and flexible in your work would make it a lot easier as a designer to work. I think it's your superpower.

28:02
The next question is what challenges faced by your generation would you most like to serve with the service design and why? I feel like we just need more reminder of being human. I rather tell myself I'm a human being than designer. I mean we reflect ourselves and rethink together with other people and then by doing so we know how to think better and then we turn into the self of being.

28:30
my definition of design trinity to think and do and being. So, um, I think we're, I mean, there's always room to be, be a better being, but that's yeah, how to be a better human being. I guess that's what we are trying to figure out. So collective designers. Yeah, absolutely. Especially now we have technology or things that make it like a lot easier, but we kind of lack of like the human touch, like a human to human conversation. This is a very

28:58
Crucial skill for the designer. I totally agree. And for the last question, can you share any resources, books or your role models that have inspired or influenced your design journey? I found this question super interesting. Do you have role model? I think designers don't need role model. You be yourself and that's enough. You don't need other people to resemble or reflect your identity like you yourself already fall.

29:27
So, I mean, looking at yourself, I guess, yourself as a role model. Be original. Yeah, be original. Yes, okay. Thank you so much.

29:41
Hi Linda, lovely to meet you. Could you tell us a little bit about yourself and your background and what brought you to Helsinki? Hello, first of all, thank you very much for having me here. And yes, I'm happy to tell my background and why I'm here. I love all about humanity, all about human stories. And that slowly brought me to the service design and which brought me to the master's program in service design. And that's how I'm here. And I'm happy to be here. What master's program are you doing?

30:11
SDSI, the Erasmus Mondus one. So we are in Latvia, Finland and Estonia. What have you learned so far and which talk have you found most impactful today from the conference? Oh my goodness. The most difficult question because so many. If I have to have, have to name one, then that would be, I'm sorry if I pronounced the last name wrongly, but Marie one, threeish, threeish about the inclusivity and about how we should.

30:40
design with people. Yeah. But there were like any other like Hannah, Hannah's Harry's keynote about how Helsinki users design is like mind blowing. Oh yeah. I found that it's so expensive how it's being applied in Helsinki, which I thought was amazing. And the big hard hitting question. What is your design style and an emoji or a meme? Um, can I have two?

31:07
You can have two. Well, definitely a heart because I'm here for the people and it's just, it adjusts where my heart is, but then the other emoji would be the brain because you have to use, I have to use structure, knowledge, and you have to do with empathy, with a passion, but also with understanding. And that's why I'm studying service design. Yeah, I think that's really cool. And.

31:35
What day-to-day annoyance would you most like to solve with service design and why? This is an interesting question, thank you, because I get very frustrated when things doesn't work the way they are and I think this is why we are all service designers. But currently at the moment, as like my life is a lot around families with young children and I am myself a family with young children.

32:03
I get really frustrated and annoyed, which is one of the possible master thesis as well. When things meant for the audience doesn't really work because their parents are like very simple needs such as restrooms, like how can mom go to the restroom with a double stroller like where she leaves the kids and like all sorts of kind of things like social events where she would, the parents would like to participate.

32:32
In some cases, the families just are kind of, it's not officially that they are excluded, but they wouldn't participate knowing that it's not suitable for the kids. And it's the same thing in the work field. Like me and my husband, we really love working. We are responsible people, but it's very expensive when they are sick for us to go to the work because we have to have someone to care for them, which, yeah.

32:58
And then, or either some of us is just giving up his career for time to like, so it's kind of like, basically now I'm all about young kids and their families. They need really support. Who are you going to bring along in the journey to help you address this challenge? There is, have you heard of Doug Dietz? No, I haven't. Okay. His speech in 2012 is actually the first posh why I am in design.

33:26
It happened that he's at that time, like years ago, I didn't think much about the families with children, but it just happened that the speech was about how he redesigned healthcare for the children. So the families feel relaxed. And I have been going back to his TEDx talk time by time. And every time when I listen to it, I have tears in my eyes, how much impact design created in medical manipulation.

33:56
so that the kids are no more sedated when they go through it and parents are no more, it would be a little to say stressed when they're going through simple manipulation, but the kid is having fun. They design it as a play, as a journey, and the kids are like, his example was that the kid was coming out and saying like, hey, can I come back? Now it's very personal. At that time, I was very touched by his speech.

34:25
But now it's also very personal when we needed to sedate our kid to have a simple heart test. And it was like a huge deal. So she needed to be sedated and like, they were like super nervous. So it's like, yeah, over the years, his speech got even stronger. So I would like to bring him along. It sounds like someone would be a great collaborator for the Soft That would be really cool. Can you share any resources, books?

34:55
or role models that have inspired or influenced your design journey. And I feel like we've got a couple, but I'll love a couple more. Yes, yes. Of course, Doug did, since like what I said already. Don Norman, definitely the last I heard was him speaking to the creator of ADPList, Felix Lee, which was a great resource. And if he's talk about design books, then change by design by Tim Brown. But I think like in within

35:24
service designers world, like we all know these resources, but then what I would like to add, just reading human stories. It's something that I do daily. That's where my heart is. And that's like every day I open, for instance, Humans of Bombay, their website. And I haven't, I have never been there, but I have the feeling that I can feel their, their people, what they are about. There is like a...

35:50
different websites. It's like you could read magazines or something to learn about people, how diverse we are. And it's like, I do follow these pages, Humans of New York, Humans of Amsterdam. I have checked even there is a Humans of Helsinki, but that's like not very updated site. But I would say all about human stories, about real human. I think that's a great place to find inspiration as well. Like you say, listeners can find their inspiration as actually...

36:17
Right. In the room that they're in, I can just talk to and get some human stories from the people around them, which I think is an amazing idea. And that's where you also get the drive to do the service design, because I do have the feeling that we are the visionaries, how it is supposed to be. And we have the heart to solve the issues, to help the people, to have a pleasant life. And service design is the tools, methods, how to do it. You do it for people.

36:49
Hi, Kata. Thank you so much for being here. Yeah, no worries. I'm really happy to be here. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, and what brought you to Service Design Global Conference in Helsinki? Yes. So my background is in architecture, but I decided to switch into service design, and I'm currently pursuing a master's degree in service design with SDSI. That's actually one of the conference partners here.

37:14
I volunteered at the global conference last year, actually, I was on-site volunteer and I also volunteered for the next-gen conference. So that's the one that's happening online in spring. And that's how I'm here this year as an attendee, which is a really nice experience now being more relaxed, I guess, not working. Oh, so this year you're not a volunteer, you as an attendee. I'm actually an attendee. Perfect. Actually, I'm from this architect background as well. Oh, really? What architect? Were you an architect architect?

37:43
Yes, I was an architect architect. Oh, yeah, but it's my background. Interior architect. All right. I did a lot of interiors as well. And I worked for quite a bit as an architect working with interior design offices, but also new built developments. And I realized that as an architect, I don't get much to say on a strategic level. So we get to pour a lot of concrete and build things that could be wasteful, not exactly sustainable.

38:10
So I think services design is for me a way to try to do better. Yes. That's why you moved like to the strategy to like the beginning of like the design process. Yeah. Let's see how it goes. But that's the plan. Right. So what have you learned so far on which talk that you found most impactful? There are quite a few that I really liked. I think the one today about complexity about complex system was really interesting because

38:37
I'm definitely interested in systems thinking. So the talk from Alessandra yesterday about systems thinking was definitely really insightful, but today learning about complex systems and how you actually can't design the system, which is complex because it's impossible. We just need to embrace this complexity rather than try to redesign it. That's a bit, um, yeah, just mind blowing. Yeah. I found like many, um, problem working with the stakeholder is like that messy, the complex system, but embracing it instead of like.

39:06
try to change it or fuzzing it is absolutely better way. Yeah, exactly. The next exciting question is what is your design style in an emoji or meme? Tell us why. Yeah, I think that was the, that is a very hard question, but I was thinking since I like dealing with complexity and systems, there's this meme of this like mad scientist trying to explain things. I don't know if you know which one I mean, but I feel like I'm kind of like this scientist trying to explain it's like complexity. Yeah, maybe. I loved it.

39:36
That's a good one. And the next question is what day-to-day annoyance would you most like to serve with the service design and why? I think I could mention what I'm currently working on as my master's thesis, which is public toilets. You know, it was always annoying for me to see how there is a big inequality in provision of public toilets for men, women, different genders, different, different disabilities, different abilities. And so I want to work on this because I see how.

40:06
This impacts a larger system, public toilets, a basic human need, human right, as something that's actually difficult to access. Yeah. That's a very good aspect that you want to solve actually, because it's like fundamental thing, which brought us to the next question that if you can bring one collaborator along the journey to solve that problem with you, who are you bringing? Yeah. So I was thinking it would be really nice to bring someone with a really good voice.

40:34
Meaning someone can bring people together to create some impact. And I was thinking of this activist Jane Jacobs. Maybe not every service designer would know her, but definitely every architect does. She was talking a lot about this like human aspect of public space and the city, how we should embrace complexity and this humanity of public space, how it's okay to have mixed uses.

40:59
I totally agree. I think the quality of public space and services really affect quality of life, people's life. And sometimes you can think like, oh, urban design, service design is something different, but no, actually they are all the same thing that you need to do it in parallel. We're realizing of time that this difference between digital and physical is kind of blurred because now we can create communities, even in local neighborhoods, with digital tools as well.

41:28
So to me it's interesting. I also worked as a UX designer for a little bit. I tried this at first before getting into service design. And for sure we can do so much with the digital tools as well. Do you have any resources, books or your own models that have inspired or influenced your design journey? Many, but one that I think would be relevant to what I was talking about is Downhill.

41:55
because he's both designer, like service, strategic designer and urbanist. And I think he inspired me to really look at this intersection of like urban planning, urban studies and service design. Especially his book about dark matter and Trojan horses where I can explain how we can look at any complex problems. It's really interesting for me to see how he works with both like digital and physical, but also the space.

42:23
and the service and this is what I'm also interested in. Great, thank you so much for your time today.

42:35
This episode was recorded live in Helsinki at the Service Design Global Conference 24. Our interviewers for this episode were Jean Watanye and Ellis Kennedy SDN Yap is a production from the Service Design Network UK chapter. We hope that you've enjoyed this episode and now you've got a choice. You can either share it with your network or you can keep it to yourself. You know what we prefer you to do. Thanks for listening.

43:04
This trip's an inspiration!