What is service design and how can it help designers conceive of better environments that better serve their users?
This is the question that John Stoddard and I attempted to answer in this conversation.
John is a Service Design consultant and teacher, based in the Bay Area, helping organizations create high value customer experiences. He's worked with many organizations and firms in the past, most notably IDEO in their London and Palo Alto offices. He's also an educator, having taught at UC Berkeley and University of San Francisco.
About the podcast: Single Serves is a podcast where we interview experts on single issues of interest to architects and designers. The thought-provoking ideas shared here are intended to inspire our listeners to become well-rounded entrepreneurs who are the leaders of their field.
Credits: ©2022 Produced by Révélateur Studio & edited by Chris Rodd
RVLTR (00:04):
Can you tell us who you are and what you do, in your own words, in three sentences or less?
John Stoddard (JS) (01:33):
Okay. I wrote it down just to try and be concise. All right. So I start by saying: I believe all companies are service businesses and that means they are creating customer relationships, which lead to recurring revenue rather than the old style of business based on transactions. And we can talk more about what that all means, but basically the key to providing a wonderful service is the customer experience. And that's what I do. I design services with a better customer experience than existed before or improve customer experiences that have problems. So I I'm a consultant. I work with companies and organizations to help them understand their customers better and find a way to respond to those customer needs. In a way that is more careful about understanding those needs and more careful about how to deliver those responses to those needs normally as a service, and since in the current business world where I operate everything is a service these days. That's where I focus the customer experience.
RVLTR (03:05):
So my next question was going to be what is service design? I believe you've already pretty much answered that. Is there anything you want to add to it, to maybe make it a little more clear?
JS (03:16):
I think it's worth exploring the word service for a little bit. In the old world and, customer service was what happened to fix problems for customers. Someone buys a product, maybe in a store, they take it home it breaks or they have a problem with it. They go back to customer service. That's the old meaning of customer service, which was fixing problems with products particularly or you're not happy with the service, you get on the phone and you complain about it. You talk normally with customer service, but what really happened with the internet in particular, was that companies realized that providing support for their customers when they buy something, purchase something from them, that was part of the product really. So you might buy a television and you, take it home and you want to be able to use it immediately, use it easily. So you expect that television to be intuitive in how you use it. In some products, you feel you should read the instruction book and that is if you like training and then when you are using it you, you have a particular goal in mind for what you're trying to do, you could be doing something for yourself or, or doing something for other people. So that again is a service. So, creating a product and supporting it with training making it easy to buy, making it easy to maybe to use in fact that that's all part of the products these days. And so what's happened is products have become expanded in into services. And of course services have always existed. You know, a restaurant is a service but economists have always had a problem trying to figure out what is a restaurant, for example, is it a service providing you know, the an environment and, and people that help you have a meal as a service, or is it a manufacturer? Cause they make food and you can even buy that food and take it away, it's a product. So what's happened is the old economic divisions between the two sectors, service and product, that's all evaporated. Thanks to technology really. So the internet made people aware that it's not just the product, it's really the whole journey that you go on when you you buy what we used to call a product. And that requires a new attitude and a new approach from companies that used to be thinking of themselves as manufacturers, for example. And now they have to take responsibility for the whole of that journey. And they're glad to actually, because it leads to a closer relationship with their customer. So service used to mean limited support for products and what happened was products and services merged. And now the service is really what companies do.
RVLTR (07:15):
Yeah. And your restaurant example is a fascinating one because, and I'm not an expert in the field, but when you describe what they're offering, I would say it's neither a service nor a product. It's an experience.
JS (07:29):
Yes.
RVLTR (07:30):
It's really what people buy is the quality of the experience. And the food is just a tiny portion of it.
JS (07:36):
That's true. Maybe it's more than that as well. I mean, the experience is how you deliver the service, I would say, but there's performance as well. Okay. That food has got to be nourishing, for example is gotta be safe. And so this performance is what the thing does, what the restaurant does, what the food does. And, and then there's how you do it and. I regard that as the service, you're enabling people to achieve something which is a definition of the service, really. So yes, the experience, when you're designing a service, a large part of it is designing how you deliver the service, which is the experience as you say.
RVLTR (08:28):
Yeah, that makes sense. So why is service design important in your mind?
JS (08:34):
Well, it's what I observe happening in business and in the world. Really. if you, you have a choice between two companies trying to sell you something, you are gonna go with the company that provides a better experience, the better service. And if you buy a product and you find it's hard to use or you find that it feels like it's designed for someone else, rather than you, that's bad service. It's gonna lose you customers from that company's point of view. So really the service is where you meet your customer and how you create a relationship that's gonna last over time. And so another word for that is the brand relationship. So we're used to the idea of being loyal to a brand. You know, you get to know a brand, you feel is a good fit for you, and you return to that brand when you want to expand what you're doing in some way. And so that that relationship is provided through service. And therefore the success and survival of any company these days, I believe is down to the quality of service they design and deliver.
RVLTR (10:09):
Which is no small feat, cause it's an incredibly complex problem to solve really.
JS (10:15):
There's a process to get there. And one of the best processes around is called design thinking. And that's what I do. I apply design thinking, which is a customer focused approach to creating a service. That was formulated, I would say principally by IDEO. And so I gained a lot of experience when I was working there on working with different sorts of customer, different sorts of industry, different sorts of cultures which all affect how you design a service.
RVLTR (10:55):
So how would the principles and ideas apply to the world of architecture and interior design?
JS (11:03):
Well, I would maintain that a building is a service delivery device. Let me unpack that a little bit. In the old world we had products, okay. Let's say a mobile phone. That mobile phone evolved and along came the iPhone, which was a product that delivered services in a great way. The previous products were about delivering a service, but very limited phone calls basically. They couldn't quite deal with the internet, the iPhone, when apple created it, they realized the phone was about delivering services and that's what they created a device for delivering services, and as I was mentioning before, it's about enabling people to do things it's about providing a capability, not just an object or a thing. And so buildings are things, they're solid like a product, but I regard them as service in solid form. So a hospital for example, is very easy to see how that only exists to provide healthcare services. It's a service delivery device in a way. You could look at maybe people's homes. Now what the architect and the building designer is doing is creating an environment which allows a family or the occupant to do things, to achieve their goals. And so clearly the architect and building designer is providing a service to their clients for instance, in the case of a hospital, but also to homeowners, they're providing a service. And so the home is delivering the architect service and in many cases it's allowing their client to deliver a service. And so you have the situation that occurs in the, in the business as well. There would B to B to C going on there. So a business supplies, a business which supplies a customer or consumer. So however you look at it, in my mind a building is about enabling people by providing a service it's a service providing device, therefore that service needs designing in such a way that it's a great experience, as you mentioned before. Therefore designing the building as if it's an object is that shows concern for the clients, the architects clients, but it really means you have to go much further and think about all the people who use that building and think about the journey they go on and the experience they have as you are designing the building, because it's about enabling those people, it's about providing a service to those people. So architects should be thinking about service design. And I have to say that that's not something these days that you can do without training. Okay. In the same way that when software kind of took over in products. And initially that software user interface, the interaction was, was designed by industrial designers at first because it was an extension of making the product nice to use and safe to use and so on. So the first wave of any new discipline is done by the existing disciplines, but pretty soon you need people who are trained and have experience. Now in, in my case, I was lucky I had my training at IDEO and a lot of experience there. But these days there are service designers coming out of college and that includes business schools. And they are professionally trained service designers and they should be on the architects team. They should be on the building designers team. If they're going to design the experience and design the service to a professional level, which these days means global, world class.
RVLTR (15:48):
I can tell you from experience, there are few, if any firms that have service designers on staff, so while you were answering the question, the idea occurred to me that basically buildings would be the real world equivalent to software. It's an interface for people to accomplish certain tasks or goals. Is that fair to characterize it that way?
JS (16:11):
Well, it's hardware and software, right. And so those two things, hardware and software are quite often part of providing a service. You need that other element, which is how you deliver the software and how you deliver the, the hardware. And so, there's a phrase in, in the product design world, they talk about software as service? And I think you could say you could talk about architecture as service. You could talk about building buildings as service now. The software equivalent is, maybe going off in a slightly different direction to the service. I think because as buildings become intelligent, through AI, through machine learning, through machine vision, through touchless interaction, through behavioral interaction. As They become smart, then they do have their own software. And that's kind of behind the scenes, I think.
RVLTR (17:24):
You're talking about literal software?
JS (17:27):
Yeah.
RVLTR (17:28):
Yeah. Okay.
JS (17:28):
I worked with a startup in Silicon valley called use space, and we were exploring machine vision and machine learning, which allowed a space to be monitored by infrared cameras, such that people's behaviour could be monitored because the space was mapping those people. It was mapping their shape and how they moved so that the building could interpret people's behaviour. So in that case, the space becomes interactive. So that's an AI based software. In the past we needed physical things to allow buildings, to interact with people. We needed doorbells, we needed sensors on doors. We needed maybe a reception desk and someone behind the desk and a telephone. If you're in an airport to, try and get help, all these things are physical ways to allow a building to respond to people. But with with spatial monitoring machine vision, then the space merely uses invisible infrared, for example to be able to respond to people. So in the case of use space, we were exploring what happens if you walk into a department store and you want to maybe head to the furniture department and you go to that department and you want to inquire about the furniture that's there. The first thing you do is look around for an assistant, the sales assistant can help you, perhaps. So when you do that, you are behaving in a certain way. If you watch someone walk into that furniture department and look around in a certain way, you can read their behaviour and you can tell that they are looking for help. And that's what an AI system can do. So in that case, the store can respond to people and bring humans into the picture as needed. So that's what I mean by, you know, buildings having software.
RVLTR (20:08):
So if service design principles and concepts can be applied and maybe should be applied to architecture and interior design, why in your mind are so many buildings performing poorly and not providing the service they're meant to?
JS (20:29):
I think it's it's a lack of input from their customers, from their users, really. They're limiting the users they're thinking about perhaps. And perhaps they're thinking about their clients, certainly. And they're thinking at a broad level about people, they're thinking about people walking into a hospital but people don't exist. Actually, the world is made up of individuals and they all have different needs and a different culture. And those needs are more than a place to sit and wait, for example, in the reception area their needs are: "I've got an urgent problem. I need help right now". Or "I've come here to see a relative who's very sick, and I don't know where to go or how to make contact with them. What do I do?" So every individual has a need. So this is tough, but what architects and building designers need to do is figure out what are the main needs of their main customers. They gotta decide which customers are priority. So therefore they need a lot of focus on those people and which customers are next level down in terms of the attention they need. If in the world of business you know, you've got to get down to a much more granular understanding of your customer and your users compared to the old approach, the old marketing approach, where you'd categorize people by the hundred. Whereas in the new world of customer experience and service design, you've got to get down to individual individuals and what are their real needs. And then you have to figure out what are the priorities, what are all the different needs and how do you respond to them all? I mean, you do find that those needs break down into main categories. So it's not as if you end up with, you know, 10,000 different customer needs, it normally breaks down into a hierarchy of needs. And if you are wise, you'll figure out what's the top priority. Which means then you have to figure out what business you are in. So you have to figure it out, and you may find that the hospital is really two businesses in one, maybe. So the first thing we have to do is help people decide, are they this type of customer or that type of customer when they arrive? So instead of having one parking lot, for instance, for all patients, you might decide to have parking lots for different types of patient with a different path for those people as they come into the hospital. That leads to more ideas about how a hospital should be designed. Once you start going into people's needs, it's not just a question of signage in the hospital. It becomes, how do you structure the hospital? Do you have two hospitals, urgent and non urgent? So it can get quite fundamental. And the trick is definitely to figure out what is your building really about. If it's an office building, it's not about providing an environment for people to work on office stuff, it's that the people in that building are trying to achieve something and your building should help them achieve that, which means you have to understand what those people are trying to do. And that's a challenge. If the building is gonna change its purpose over time, for example, then you design a building that's flexible. So it gets quite fundamental very quickly. Is this making sense?
RVLTR (25:01):
Yeah, absolutely. So if you had a magic wand and you could change the way architecture is practiced, conceived or delivered, what would you do based on your expertise and what you know about service design?
JS (25:20):
Well I believe building design would would be better if the designers took an experiential approach and a service approach. So design the service experience as they're giving form to the building and everything associated with that. And in order to do that, the magic wand would be to hire service designers or work with service designers. You don't have to hire people at first. You know, there are lots of service design consultants like myself who can work with an organization on a project basis. And and then the building designers can, can see how to fit that new way of thinking that new way of designing into their practice. So that's, that would be my magic wand, I think, would be find service design partners right now.
RVLTR (26:28):
Are you aware of any architecture and design projects being designed that way with service designers on the teams?
JS (26:38):
Well, it's kind of happening the other way in my experience now, I have not worked with an architectural practice actually. My approach to service design came out of product design, and I know that in that world, what I regard as leading design and innovation firms like IDEO and Frog Design and many others, well, not too many others. But they are actually spreading and expanding what they do to go beyond the normal boundaries. So if someone approaches an innovation firm that takes this approach then that company is gonna start asking questions, which expands the question or the problem you're solving. For example, I worked with a firm in China a little while ago. They have a chain of stores and the founder of that company, they have quite a few stores. They asked me to help them figure out how to improve their customer experience. And they do a really good job. They're very successful, but they wanted to compete with online sales, for example, in their stores. And normally stores can get decimated by online sales, unless you have something to offer, which gives people a reason to go to the stores. And so that's what I worked on with them. And so I started off by asking: "Okay, so why do people go stores now"? And they said: "To buy what we sell". And as you can imagine, I then followed up with a lot of other questions to figure out what was going on. And we realized we needed to go and find out actually, so together with the CEO and founder and other people in the management, we went out to the stores and we watched people, we watched customers, we talked to customers and we established why people were going to the stores. And we found out that for instance, people were shopping quite often as pairs rather than individuals. And that was because the products being sold there were being purchased as gifts by one person for another. In other words, the people were not going there just to buy the products. What they were doing was going to the store as part of celebrating something, it could be a birthday or a promotion. They were helping someone celebrate something in their life. So in other words, the store was about celebration. And so when we looked at how the customer experience might be improved in the future, that became the theme for how the store was designed and how the staff behaved and what experience was that people received. So if you go to a store for a celebration, that's very different from walking into store to simply buy something. And so the store design was an expansion of trying to think of the customer experience. That way of thinking has become the norm for innovation firms and design firms. And they are expanding it into spaces and buildings and events and institutions. So once you adopt that approach the boundaries don't make a lot of sense, because you're looking across the whole experience. In other words, architects may find that their world is maybe becomes part of something else.
RVLTR (30:59):
Yeah, that makes sense. And it's fascinating to think that sooner than later, the practice of architecture could be completely transformed because someone else is coming in and disrupted the industry hopefully for the better.
JS (31:16):
If when you think about industrialized buildings something you've asked me about, then the difference between a building and a product and the service it provides means that, it's kind of fragmented the old definition of building design.
RVLTR (31:37):
Yeah. It's kind of funny to think that in a world where every industry tends to become more and more productive over time, find better ways to produce the same thing for for cheaper or better at the same price. The architecture and construction industries have gone in the completely complete opposite direction because the the cost of construction keeps going up. And it's due to a number of factors. We don't need to necessarily get into the details of that, but in spite of a boom in technology, which is the most mind blowing thing, do you have any idea why that is? Any kind of insights?
JS (32:21):
Well, Every building is a prototype in one way, isn't it? And unless we are talking about modular and industrialized building, then buildings tend to be a one off prototype. There's no pressure to adopt new, new ways to do things. If you can just modify what you've always done. But I think there's a need in the building industry perhaps to step back and, and figure out what business are they really in? Obviously architects go into architecture because they love creating architecture. And that's very understandable, but to every hammer, everything is a nail and therefore there's a danger just in seeing every problem you are solving as a building. And I think the great architects don't fall into that trap necessarily. And therefore come up with a new approach to things
RVLTR (33:44):
That makes sense. I like to compare buildings and cars because cars used to be very much like buildings a hundred or so years ago, you'd buy a chassis with an engine and then you'd go to a coach builder to make a custom body that's uniquely yours. And then we moved into the mass production of cars and then the mass customization, where everybody buys the same car, but you can choose the color of your stitching and leather and interior and paint while still buying, by and large, The same product. Do you think that's an apt comparison and we could realistically expect buildings to eventually become like cars where you buy base module, like a chassis, and then you pick the color of the paint and you might pick some of the finishes, but by and large it's the same structure. And then everybody lives in a similar environment, at least for people who can't afford to have a prototype designed for themselves. The challenge in this industry is that there's been many attempts to do that. The biggest in recent times was a company called Katerra whicho was a huge business that aimed at basically mass manufacturing buildings, at least structural parts, and they failed. They went bankrupt, I think last year. And there's been many attempts before that. Is there anything inherently unique to the way we live in buildings, the architecture that would prevent us from taking some of those lessons from other mass manufactured products to make the design production and sale of those products more efficient and more cost effective?
JS (35:40):
Well I think your comparison with automobiles is a little bit black and white. I think it's a little more complicated than that. I mean, when you were thinking of the car, which one were you thinking of?
RVLTR (35:58):
Mine.
JS (36:00):
Okay. I asked that because there are many different types of car and some cars try to be everything. So there is actually variety, even though there's mass production and in the building industry, there's been flexibility and industrialization for hundreds of years, right? Based on this module called a brick. So I'm not sure that we need to be forced into a choice between prototypes and uniformity. It depends how you design the building. There are lots of different ways to construct a building, the chassis, framework and body, which you mentioned, that's one way you could approach it. And I think some, some architects have got close to that in a way. Other, other people have gone a different direction, they've gone for the unified body, which is totally flexible. And it can be a van, or it can be a, a sports car within the same unified body. So I think it's the main thing is to figure out what problem you're solving, and then you'll find that there are different solutions depending on what you think the problem is.
RVLTR (37:39):
So let's, let's rephrase the question: If based on the assumption that each building being a prototype might be counterproductive or a waste of time and resources, what would be the solution to that problem?
JS (37:56):
Oh, I think we've already seen solutions. You've got the one-of building, which is the large expensive building. But then you have mass produced homes in this part of the world. In the bay area, we have Eichler homes. You may be familiar with them. They're modernist, but using a lot of natural materials combined.
RVLTR (38:27):
What's the name again?
JS (38:29):
Eichler. He was the, the architect entrepreneur who created them. They are standardized in many ways, but because they're based on the philosophy of having minimum walls inside so that the space flows and having a lot of glass. So that the outside and inside nesh together. So it's a small house, but it feels big because the outside comes in, as it were. So you know, that's pretty standardized. And there are systems which I think get close to that. Now that's one style. Other people might prefer a more traditional style home, but that's just a question of how you design the system really. I think there have been examples that have taken steps towards industrialization, but we have to recognize that to do it properly and thoroughly requires a huge amount of investment. [For example] Tesla, he [Elon Musk] and his team rethought what an automobile is, but it did require a hundred million dollars to get started. And so I don't know how much investment has been going into building systems, probably a lot. But I think we're at the early days of figuring all that out. And maybe in some parts of the world where a building lasts longer. In California buildings have a very short life they're, designed to be easy to build and easy to take down.
RVLTR (40:29):
In most of North America. And I've always wondered, because I grew up in Europe, where centenarian buildings are very common 200, 300, 400, 500 years, sometimes even more. I think there's a threshold before which buildings are considered old and not worth keeping around. And then 100-150 years in, they become heritage or considered worthy of keeping. And then after that, they're impossible to demolish because of the level of protection they benefit from. And that's not true everywhere, but for the sake of the argument, let's just say, that's the way it works. I've always wondered why aren't we building for 200, 300, 400 years, because you could realistically very easily design a building to have the skeleton that lasts this long, and then you just remodel parts of it, or you re-clad the facade to bring it up to the standards of the day. I actually have a friend who was a guest on this podcast, who started this business which, which mandate is to make the economic case, that buildings that you keep around longer save money in the long run instead of building and demolishing every 50 years, even if you did that every 150 years. And so she's developed a whole system of assessing the, the quality and the state of repair of a building that's very thorough and gives a instant snapshot into what the building is worth in the long term, like in terms of how useful it can be for the future. And that's generally one of her arguments is that the way buildings are financed, they're financed over the course of a few decades. I think it's generally only 30 or 40 years for most mortgages, especially in the commercial world. So there's no incentive to think about what the building becomes after that. Because once you've amortized it, paid it off, then you can either sell it or demolish it and borrow again to build another one which leads to a whole bunch of issues, like buildings that are being oftentimes unnecessarily demolished. And I think that's one of the biggest problems we have at least in north America. Europe might be a bit different because they have more of a tendency to keep things around. But what are your thoughts on that?
JS (43:13):
Well, I put my service designer hat and I have to ask, what problem are you solving for which customer? Say you're designing a hotel, okay? The service that hotel provides could be change over 5 or 10 years easily, right? What are the places people want to stay in, you know, look at Airbnb: what is a hotel these days? So in designing a hotel, it could be appropriate to design it in such a way that it could be easily changed. Quite radically within five years, but if you're designing someone's home in the country, you know, in the rural setting, then maybe it's appropriate that that becomes a family heritage thing, which is passed on generation to generation and has great value by being unchanging. And then again, if you are designing a place for people to work in the city, is that a cafe you know, do you need a building necessarily? So it all depends. What's the problem you're solving and for whom, right? And so the thing you described sounds great, but maybe for some customers and not others, and what we have to do is be very careful what problem you're solving and for whom, which is, the two questions that every venture capitalist asks every startup. What problem are you solving? That's the first question they ask. And, and if you're not clear about that, then you haven't defined the problem enough. And you're gonna waste resources and waste time coming up with a a great answer to the wrong problem. And so service design forces you really, for its process to, to immediately ask, okay, which customers are we talking about here? And not only now, but in the future. You know, when I work with a company and I ask them, who are your customers and what do they need? There's a tendency for them to be immediately thinking about their current customers. They're also thinking about what they provide now, which is probably irrelevant in the future, but you have to think about what customers will need in the future, because you want a strategy for your business. That's going to yield wonderful innovations and products and services over a time scale that is gives you a good return on investment. So we have to think not only about the customers we're solving a problem for now, but which customers are we interested in in the future, which could be different.
RVLTR (46:22):
That makes a lot of sense. And the hotel example you mentioned is entirely true, because hotels are being rerefurbished every 10 years or so, maybe every 15 years. But they don't necessarily demolish the whole building. They just redo the interiors.
JS (46:38):
Right. And they would prefer if they could change it once a year, I suggest.
RVLTR (46:45):
Probably yeah.
JS (46:46):
They've gotta have a new message, right. They've gotta have a new offering compared to the competition. And so therefore they've gotta be able to adapt as quickly as someone running a cafe or providing, you know, entertainment experiences, for example.
RVLTR (47:05):
And I think that takes us to one of the biggest problems I see in the industry is the lack of specialization. Most architects want to be generalists who are able to design anything and everything. And I've been trying to convey the message for a few years, now that specialization is a way forward because you can become the number one expert at a specific typology.
JS (47:33):
I would push back a little bit. I don't think they need to become specialized necessarily if their process allows them to come up with specialized understandings of the problem and specialized solutions. If your process is smart enough, you can be a generalist.
RVLTR (47:50):
That's an interesting thought. I, I think that's all for the questions I have for you today. Is there any parting thoughts you'd like to share with the listeners?
JS (48:03):
I think in talking with you, I've become even more interested in thinking about the buildings as service. What happens if you think about going beyond how you provide a service within existing buildings or conventionally defined buildings, but what happens if the building is strictly a service delivery device, where would that take you in terms of how you'd design a building? I'd like to think more about that. And that might be my parting shot. I think apart from advising, building designers and architects to hire a service designer, as soon as they can, or a service researcher, I mean, someone who's gonna help them with a better understanding of their users and customers.
RVLTR (48:59):
Or even take a training in service design to at least get a basic understanding of it.
JS (49:05):
You can, but then you run up again, run up against a problem that you know, service design is not rocket science. It's harder than that. Okay. Because it's like playing the violin. I could tell you how to play a violin in 30 seconds. Okay. Pretty simple. Take, you know, pick up the instrument, put it on your chin, hold the fret board, then run a bow across the strings, press down on the strings. There you go. Those are the principles. Now, how long would it take you to get beautiful music out of that violin, maybe years to become really proficient, that's the slightly misleading thing with service design. It sounds simple. The principles are simple, but to do it properly needs skills that evolve over time and yes, you could be trained, but it's not like learning an Adobe tool. It's something which modifies your philosophy or approach your way of looking at the world. And it takes a lot of practice to do it without slipping back into the old ways of doing things. So yes, you can be trained, but it's gonna mean going back to college to do a masters or something like that.
RVLTR (50:25):
I was saying that more in the sense of like getting a basic understanding so they know what to look for and who to hire and those kinds of things.
JS (50:33):
Ah, right. Yeah. That's the first thing, as you say, you've gotta learn to understand what you don't know. So the problem is you start off by not knowing what you don't know,
RVLTR (50:43):
But would you say that architects as people well versed in the, the art of designing things are well positioned to learn about service design?
JS (50:53):
Oh yeah, absolutely. Because they're already problem-solving. They're already thinking about how people react to a space and they're able to visualize what it feels like to be in a space to have all those, those skills, which is great. Now they just have to drill deeper.
RVLTR (51:16):
That makes sense. Well, John, I wanna thank you very much for taking the time to talk about service design. And it was very interesting conversation and hopefully the first of many, and also hopefully people open their eyes to what you had to say and maybe reach out to you other service designers to have meaningful conversations.
JS (51:39):
Yeah. That's been great. Thank you very much for those stimulating questions.