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Advancing Service Design with Ben Reason and Patrick Quattlebaum

Is it time to advance the practice of service design?

Ben Reason and Patrick Quattlebaum think so. They’re veteran service designers and co-authors of a pair of Rosenfeld books—Service Design: From Insight to Implementation and Orchestrating Experiences: Collaborative Design for Complexity respectively.

Ben, founder of LiveWork Studio, and Patrick, who founded Harmonic Design in Atlanta, join Lou to talk about launching a new Rosenfeld conference—Advancing Service Design—designed to highlight the service design’s potential for a new generation. They see opportunities for service design to go deeper—by integrating with and strengthening existing practices, like product management and agile, and broader—by better connecting systems that span multiple organizations (think healthcare).

Working with the Rosenfeld team, they’re creating a conference program that you can be a part of—they describe the kinds of presentation proposals they’re looking for from prospective speakers. Patrick and Ben hope you’ll join them in advancing service design; the conference will take place virtually December 3-4.

What You’ll Learn from this Episode:

  • The real meaning of service design
  • How service design is evolving
  • Some crucial differences between the work in North America and Europe
  • Why communication between organizations is so important
  • How the upcoming conference will inspire and support you
  • How to contribute and become part of the upcoming case studies
  • How the panel discussions at the December conference will be different

Quick Reference Guide:
0:15 – Introduction to Ben and Patrick
1:50 – Being change agents to take Service Design to the next level
5:03 – Announcing a new conference: Advancing Service Design– Looking at Service Design Through Different Lenses
6:05 – Perspectives on different sides of the Atlantic
11:30 – Why service design exists in the first place
12:38 – More about the upcoming December virtual conference
17:40 – Call for proposals for the case studies and what they are looking for
19:00 – Ben’s ideas for the conference: The next iteration of service design going from within an organization to between multiple organizations
21:09 – Patrick’s ideas for the conference: Getting the people who want to transform things to communicate and the complexity of partnering together
23:05 – Bringing success from the inside
24:45 – Commercial break
27:10 – Personal story from Patrick about communication highlighting the broader concept of the case studies for the conference
32:30 – Personal story from Ben about connection across systems
37:16 – A different type of panel discussion to be at the conference
40:15 – Gifts for listeners

Anticipating Risk, Regulating Tech: A Playbook for Ethical Technology Governance

IFTF’s Ethical OS Toolkit has been used by many organizations and agencies across the civic sector, including the California state legislature, the United States Conference of Mayors, and other local governments, to bring more foresight and long-term thinking to policy decisions about new technologies. In response to high demand from government entities, and with support from the Tingari-Silverton Foundation, the IFTF Governance Futures Lab has developed this Playbook for Ethical Tech Governance. Adapted from the original Ethical OS, the Playbook will equip civil servants with the skills and tools to proactively resolve ethical dilemmas emerging from the constantly evolving landscape of new technology and new social and political dynamics. It’s intended to help those working in government, or leaders in the public sector, to make better long-term decisions by increasing their foresight capacity, allowing them to develop future-facing regulatory structures that help them anticipate the worst consequences of technology before they happen.

In this session, Ilana Lipsett will present Institute for the Future’s Playbook for Ethical Tech Governance, a decision-making guide for governments and leaders who are charged with regulating change and mitigating risk, all while encouraging innovation. The guide was designed to help safeguard against both intended and unintended consequences of techno-social shifts. This session will include an overview of the Playbook, along with a live demo of how to apply these principles and put them into action using a Decision Tree worksheet that accompanies the guide.

Liftoff! Practical Design Leadership to Elevate Your Team, Your Organization, and You

Top designers are often thrust into leadership roles, and it’s easy to forget that these two roles do not require the same skillset. In this episode, design managers and Liftoff! co-authors Chris Avore and Russ Unger discuss the mistakes and lessons they—and MANY others—have made in their new book, four years in the works. Liftoff! is a guide for new leaders looking for guidance about managing design teams effectively, and established managers who want to level up their expertise.

The Dangers of Empathy: Toward More Responsible Design Research

Empathy is widely held as an important research mindset among designers. Many design research processes begin with the word. While empathy is broadly necessary to design practice, it is not without its problems. Most designers and researchers do not also know the dangers of empathy. Consider that:

  • We confuse and conflate empathy, sympathy, and compassion. The differences are critically important.
  • Empathic resonance in the brain is extremely biased. We find it hard to empathize with people unlike ourselves.
  • Having too much empathy may also be problematic and can be weaponized by bad actors.
  • We feel empathy only for humans and animals‚ not for objects, spaces, places, or our planet.

This talk will explore the edges of empathy and show how and why two additional emotive capacities should be cultivated: curiosity and care. A short case study for a project involving four NASA space scientists will demonstrate that when these two capacities are added to empathy, they can lead to more generative research and richer insights.

Recruiting for User Research: a Chat with Nate Bolt

Nate Bolt knows more about recruiting for user research than the average human. He created the first moderated remote testing software, founded Ethnio, and authored the book Remote Research. In this podcast, Nate sits down with Lou to share ideas for how to get started, and what to look for in an ideal research participant.

Research Democratization: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

The pros and cons of democratizing user research are heavily debated. Often this is seen as a black and white scenario where we are solely in favour or against it. But what about all the shades of grey we can explore? Depending on the situation there are both benefits and dangers that lie in democratizing our research practice.

Kathleen will share her experience with research democratization. Based on this she will show a framework that will help you assess when it is an appropriate tool to further research maturity and when it might derail you.

What is Research Strategy?

As a Research Strategist, Chris is frequently asked “What is Research Strategy?” Let’s start a conversation that defines this practice and develops its approaches. Research Strategy brings processes and frameworks to bear to ensure that an organization’s research activities are deliberate, effective, and aligned with business objectives. Notably, it is not just the purview of research leadership! All of us are already engaged in this work, but we haven’t been talking about it as such. Chris will present his work in this area and invite others to join him in evolving this emerging practice.

Under My (Research) Umbrella: The Benefits and Challenges of Building a Unified Insights Function

When research is siloed it can lead to duplicative research of variable quality. In this talk, Andy explores the benefits (and challenges) of having a unified research & insights function, based on his experiences leading teams at Airtable, Instagram, and Dropbox. Further, Andy presents practical strategies to align diverse insight-generating functions, offering guidance even in situations where forming a unified team may not be possible. Through a detailed examination of real-world scenarios and Andy’s professional journey, attendees will gain valuable lessons and recommendations aimed at fostering a cohesive and effective research ecosystem.

The Humanity of Technology: Furthering the Greater Good with Jamika Burge

Though trained as a computer scientist, Jamika Burge admits she does not have the heart of a programmer; rather, she’s interested in surfacing and connecting with the humanity of the technology we create. Jamika has taken that approach in her past work, including a stint at DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), where she studied the impact of games on learning. Jamika now leads AI Design Insights at CapitalOne, and is also one of the Advancing Research 2021 Conference curators. Here she shares the story of her career path, and the work she is doing with blackcomputeHER.org (pronounced ‘black computer’), an organization she co-founded that is dedicated to supporting computation and design workforce development for black women and girls.

Jamika Recommends:
Gendershades.org, a project by Joy Buolamwini, Lead Author and Timnit Gebru, PhD, Co-Author

How UX researchers can partner with (and not be replaced by) AI [Advancing Research Community Workshop Series](Videoconference)

Four of your research colleagues discussed and defended their respective positions (below) on the impact of AI on user research. Participants engaged in a discussion and Q&A, facilitated by Dr. Jamika D. Burge.

“AI has the potential to be the researcher’s best friend, by doing all the heavy lifting associated with analysis – but it also has the potential to cause unimaginable damage”.

– Nick Fine

“Researchers absolutely must learn to create AI prompts. Not only will prompt engineering become an essential, required research skill, but it will also offer a much-needed opportunity to rethink our role as facilitators of change.”

– Alexandra Jayeun Lee

Soon, AI will be able to utilize the participant’s feedback as a prompt to create RITE design variations on the fly, offering the researcher multiple flow options organically and in real time, which will radically transform our research practice.”

– Greg Nudelman

“UX Researchers can reinvent themselves as “delightful ethicists” who oversee ethics on critical issues when generative AI supplies abundant solutions without providing the why.”

– Bo Wang