1. The document discusses service design's ambitions and influence, and its potential political and systemic consequences when working at scale within large organizations. 2. It explores different theoretical perspectives on power, knowledge, and networks that can help service designers better understand their role and interrogate the futures they envision. 3. The document calls for a more critical, reflexive practice of service design that considers questions of who gains and loses power and influence through the services being designed.

1. Make New
Experiences
Possible
For
By
Date
Power and Service Design
Making sense of service design’s politics and influence
SDGC 2019, Toronto
Gordon Ross, Vice President & Partner, OXD
October 10, 2019

2. I’m Gord Ross,
VP and Partner at
OXD in Vancouver
@gordonr on the twitters
Hello Toronto!

3. C A U T I O N
THEORY
AHEAD

4. Where is service
design going?

8. Service design
has ambitions

9. Service design wants to
be the new normal

12. “ Designing a purpose driven
circular economy”
SDGC 2019 Program

13. “ Lessons from Five Years of
Deep Partnership to Redesign
the Canadian Welfare State”
SDGC 2019 Program

14. “ The Evolving Double Diamond:
How Design Can Tackle
Economic and Societal Changes”
SDGC 2019 Program

15. “ Designing for Public Education:
Partnerships Across Government,
Technology and Design”
SDGC 2019 Program

16. “ Designing Futures We Can’t See
or Even Understand”
SDGC 2019 Program

17. What exactly is being
designed here?

18. Source: Kimbell & Blomberg, “The Object of Service Design,” Designing for Service (Bloomsbury, 2017)

19. The service encounter
A focus on the experiences people
have as they engage in interactions
with touchpoint provided by others.
Source: Kimbell & Blomberg, “The Object of Service Design,” Designing for Service (Bloomsbury, 2017)

20. The value co-creating system
A focus on the dynamic exchanges
of resources and processes that
achieve outcomes for the actors
involved, typically organizations
but possibly individuals
Source: Kimbell & Blomberg, “The Object of Service Design,” Designing for Service (Bloomsbury, 2017)

21. The socio-cultural configuration
An assemblage of constituents,
which emerges through the
dynamic unfolding of practice,
providing interfaces through which
actors engage with resources.
Source: Kimbell & Blomberg, “The Object of Service Design,” Designing for Service (Bloomsbury, 2017)

22. Source: Kimbell & Blomberg, “The Object of Service Design,” Designing for Service (Bloomsbury, 2017)

23. Source: Kimbell & Blomberg, “The Object of Service Design,” Designing for Service (Bloomsbury, 2017)

24. Source: Design Issues: Vol. VIII, Number 2, Spring 1992, MIT Press

25. Source: Design Issues: Vol. VIII, Number 2, Spring 1992, MIT Press

26. 1. Symbolic and visual communications
2. Material objects
3. Activities and organized services
4. Complex systems or environments for living,
working, playing and learning
Buchanan’s Four Orders of Design

27. 1. Symbolic and visual communications
2. Material objects
3. Activities and organized services
4. Complex systems or environments for living,
working, playing and learning
Buchanan’s Four Orders of Design

28. Service designers need to
better prepare ourselves
for intervening at scale

29. The stakes are higher when
working at scale

30. Where does service
design happen?

31. Large organization image

32. Organizations are places of
DIVERGENT INTERESTS

33. Organizations are places of
CONFLICT

34. Organizations are places of
POWER

35. What should be done?

36. 1. Bringing about futures
2. Evaluating futures
3. Enlisting sponsors for futures
4. Materializing futures
“Design makes futures.”
Source: Cameron Tonkinwise, “Just Design” (Medium)
https://medium.com/@camerontw/just-design-b1f97cb3996f

37. Large organization image
Source: https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/economy/issues-
by-the-numbers/trade-in-services-economy-growth.html

38. “ ...design gives material expression to ideological
landscapes that prefigure particular forms of living,
moving, gathering, expression and connecting.
Everyday, everywhere, humans make their lives out of
designed artifacts, systems and environments in which
are lodged with adamant beliefs and contentions about
what constitutes a life worth living.”
Keith Owens reviewing Tony Fry’s Design as Politics
https://www.academia.edu/827369/Design_and_Politics_by_Tony_Fry_A_review_by_Keith_Owens

39. “ The world is on its way to ruin
and it’s happening by design.”
Mike Monteiro, Ruined by Design

40. What do we really mean
when we talk about our
power as service designers?

41. Who is gaining and who is
losing and by which
mechanisms of power
when we design services?

43. A theory of power

44. A theory of power
A theory of action in
the face of power

45. Manuel
Castells
Source: http://biblioteca.uoc.edu/sites/default/files/styles//
public/manuelcastells.jpg

47. THE NETWORK
SOCIETY

48. (Yes, I know it’s a weak attempt at linking this
talk to the conference theme. Sorry.)

49. What is power anyhow?

50. Relational capacity to
influence asymmetrically
other social actors

51. Coercion
and/or
Construction of meaning

52. Domination:
Power embedded in the
institutions of society

55. Power is not an attribute,
but a relationship

56. EMPOWERMENT!

57. ...their empowerment
against other social
actors...

58. Networks

60. NODE
NODE
NODE
NODE
NODE
NODE

61. TIE
TIE
TIE
TIE
TIE
TIE
NODE
NODE
NODE
NODE
NODE
NODE

62. ACTOR
ACTOR
ACTOR
ACTOR
ACTOR
ACTOR

63. Source: https://www.palaisdetokyo.com/en/event/carte-blanche-tomas-saraceno

64. (This is a social network
visualization I created using
MS Excel and a plug-in
called NodeXL. For real.)

65. Power + networks

66. Networking power
Network power
Networked power
Network making power

67. Bunny power
Dog power
Sheep power
Cow power

68. Networking power

69. Who is in / who is out

71. “Unbanked, those without smartphones,
and low-income people.”

72. Who gets to use the service
you’ve designed and who
doesn’t?

73. Network power

74. The rules of inclusion

75. (Is that like a printer with a phone attached to it?)

76. Progressive elimination
of the alternatives

78. We trade convenience
for choice

79. What ways of designing
and forms of knowledge
are privileged over others
in your standards?

80. Networked power

81. Some actors have power
over others

83. This is the way the world should be

84. What if no one signs
up for our futures?

85. Network making power

86. Ability to form networks
Ability to
program/reprogram
networks

87. Sounds like governance to me

88. Source: https://medium.com/pulse-lab-jakarta/coming-together-to-design-safe-transit-solutions-for-women-c7a10b052c99

89. Who gets to make the
decisions of inclusion?

90. Networking power
Who’s in, who’s out?
Networked power
Who has influence
over others?
Network power
What are the rules
of inclusion?
Network-making power
Who decides who’s in and
who created the rules?

91. So what the hell do
service designers do
with all of this?

92. Knowledge is power

93. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicomachean_Ethics

94. techné - τέχνη
Knowing by making
Concrete, variable, context
dependent knowledge.
Technical know how.

95. episteme - ἐπιστήμη
Knowing by thinking
Universal, scientific knowledge,
invariable in time and space.
Theoretical know why.

96. phronesis - φρόνησῐς
Practical wisdom
Ability to contemplate our choices
and discern the best course of
action in the context of a particular
set of circumstances.

97. techné technical know how
episteme theoretical know why
phronesis practical knowledge
and practical ethics

98. Getting your craft wrong
Source: https://www.washington.edu/news/2016/03/14/documents-that-
changed-the-world-hanging-chads-and-butterfly-ballots-florida-2000/

99. Source: https://www.driving.co.uk/news/pointless-road-signs-removed/

100. Being illogical

102. 1. Where are we going?
2. Who gains and who loses, and by
which mechanisms of power?
3. Is this development desirable?
4. What, if anything, should we do
about it?

103. We are aspiring to
better process AND
better outcomes

104. Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2018/08/
china-abandoned-bike-share-graveyards/566576/
Service design has ambitions, our work has systemic consequences.

105. We must think critically about the futures we are creating.
Source: https://www.businessinsider.com/brazil-iphone-prison-2013-4

106. It’s time to explore some new/old theoretical territories and intellectual adjacencies.
Sociology, communication, and planning theory can help, as their focus is all about the
systemic consequences of knowledge, power, and rationality.

107. Concepts like communication power and phronesis point towards a new power-aware,
responsible and reflexive service design that can interrogate the futures we are
envisioning and materializing.
Source: CMU, Dash Marshall, Decolonizing Practices

108. 1. Service design has ambitions and our work has systemic consequences.
2. We have no choice but to think critically about our role and the futures we
are creating. Our profession needs to do better at this.
3. It’s time to explore some new and old theoretical territories, intellectual
adjacencies. Sociology, communication, and planning theory can help, as
their focus is all about the systemic consequences of knowledge, power, and
rationality.
4. Concepts like communication power and phronesis point towards a new
power-aware, responsible, reflexive service design capable of interrogating
the futures we are envisioning and materializing.

109. Post-normal service design

110. You have power. Use it
wisely.

111. Service Design and Power Reading List
https://ideas.oxd.com/sdgc19power
Have a favourite book that should be on the list?
Tweet me your faves (@gordonr) or email me (gordonr@oxd.com)

112. Image: Adam Fagen / CC-BY-NC-SA2 https://flic.kr/p/N45H8A
Unlike the act of navigation, wayfinding
implies progressing tentatively and
incrementally reaching out from one’s
situated circumstance, using oneself, and
not some independent external point, as
the basis of reference. For the wayfinder,
the territory is boundless and bottomless,
using self-referential devices to express
experience there and then as he or she
moves through the landscape.
Wayfinding precedes navigation.
Robert Chia & Robin Holt
Strategy without Design: The Silent Efficacy
of Indirect Action
(Cambridge University Press, 2009)

113. Make New
Experiences
Possible
Thank you
Gordon Ross, Vice President & Partner
210-12 Water Street, Vancouver, BC V6B 1A5
gordonr@oxd.com
+1 604 694 0554 x103
oxd.com